The Next Great Awakening 



JOSIAH STRONG 




Class _j3 






Book J.7l.h 3 J 



i,j^^-- 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 



NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 



:bv josiah st-rojvg 

THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING. lamo, cloth, 

75 cents. 

THE TIMES AND YOUNG MEN. i2mo, cloth, 
net, 75 cents, 

OUR COUNTRY: Its Possible Future and 
Its Present Crisis. With an Introduction by Prof. 
Austin Phelps^ D.D. 173d Thousand. Revised Edition, 
based on the Census of 1890. Paper, 30 cents; cloth, 60 
cents. 

THE NEW ERA; or. The Comingr Kingdom. 

49th Thousand. Library Edition."" Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt 
top, $1.50; plain cloth, lamo, 75 cents; paper, lamo, 35 
cents. 

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CITY. 15th Thou- 
sand. Paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 50 cents. 

EXPANSION, Under New World-Conditions. 

Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 

RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS FOR SOCIAL 
BETTERMENT. lamo, cloth, 50 cents. 



The Next 
Great Awakening 



BY 

JOSIAH STRONG 

Author of " Our Country,'' *'The New Era,'' ''The 

Twentieth Century City," ''Expansion*' 

and " The Times and Young Men " 



** Prepare ye the way of the Lord 
Make His paths straight*' 

— John the Baptist 



NEW YORK 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 
33-37 East Seventeenth Street 

Union Square North 
1902 






€ 



y '",<o'^ 



THE LJSRARY 0F 

Two Co^-iBft fJecEtvps^ 

iAR. 19 19b2 

COf^RIHMT EN-mv 

COPY B. 



\'^' 



Copyright, xgo* 

BY 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 



New York 

Kay Printing House 

66-68 Centre St. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Supreme Need of the World 13 

The supreme need of the world is a real God. 
Consciousness of this need the beginning of re- 
ligion. The danger that religious forms will de- 
generate into fossils. The expression of religious 
life must change as conditions change. The great- 
er the progress of civilization, the greater the need 
of a new apprehension of God. 

Prophets are men who see God in relation to 
their own times, which makes him real. Sub- 
stance of the prophetic message remains the same, 
as God is the same ; its form changes as the times 
change. 

Peculiarly difficult for this generation to appre- 
hend God, for three reasons : 

1. A materialistic civilization to which spirit- 
ual truths are dim. 

2. The scientific habit of mind, which is hostile 
to dogma. 

3. The rapid growth of natural science, which 
has established the imiversal reign of law, and 
finds in nature no Personal Will. 

These three causes of unbelief may each be 
transformed into a handmaid of religion by inter- 
preting God in the terms of present-day knowl- 
edge, and by presenting him in vital relations to 
our own times. 

II 

The Law of Spiritual Quickening 30 

Reason why moral and spiritual growth usual- 
ly shows a series of changes more or less cata- 
clysmal. 

3 



CONTENTS 

Advent of the new century a fitting time for a 
new spiritual awakening. Special meetings in 
Great Britain and United States. Absence of 
results. The great historical awakenings did not 
come uncaused. Must comply with their law. 
Law revealed by their study. 

The sixteenth century. The German Reforma- 
tion. Peculiar conditions which made Justification 
by Faith the truth peculiarly needed. Awaken- 
ing came when this forgotten truth was faithfully 
preached. 

The seventeenth century. The Puritan revival. 
Peculiar conditions which made The Divine Sov- 
ereignty the truth peculiarly needed. Conscience 
was quickened when this neglected truth was 
applied. 

The eighteenth century. The Wesleyan revival. 
Conditions which demanded certain spiritual 
truths. Isaac Taylor and Blackstone quoted. 
Wesley's spiritual experience. Preaching "a for- 
gotten gospel." 

First half of the nineteenth century. Teaching 
and work of Charles G. Finney. Conditions which 
demanded his message. Man's free agency and 
guilt. Effects of preaching these forgotten truths. 

Last half of the nineteenth century. Peculiar 
conditions which called for the message of Dwight 
L. Moody. Profound changes had attended the 
industrial revolution. Change in the nervous or- 
ganization. The "terrors of the Lord" had ceased 
to persuade. The Civil War. The neglected truth 
that God is love. 

No one of these prophets simply repeated the 
message of his predecessor. Each emphasized a 
neglected truth precisely adapted to the times, 
which made God real to his generation. 

The next great awakening will come when for- 
gotten Scriptural truths, precisely adapted to our 
own times, are faithfully preached. 

New social conditions. Social problems to be 
solved by the forgotten social teachings of Jesus. 



CONTENTS 
III 

PAGE 

The Kingdom of God 51 

The Social Ideal of Jesus, 

The "rediscovery of Christ.'* His point of view. 
His great theme, beginning, middle and end, was 
The Kingdom of God. 

To misunderstand the kingdom of God is to 
misunderstand the message of Jesus, the nature 
of Christianity, the mission of the church. The 
doctrine of the kingdom commonly misunderstood 
for centuries. 

The new Christian renaissance, and what is 
involved in it. 

Many have supposed the kingdom of God was 
identical with heaven. Results of this view. 

Others have identified the kingdom with the 
visible church. Results of this misconception. 

Another common error is to identify the king- 
dom with the invisible church. Results of this 
error. 

A measure of truth in each conception. The 
kingdom of God broader than all of them. 

The common conception of the kingdom in the 
time of Jesus. The origin of the idea. Its devel- 
opment by the Hebrew prophets. 

Jesus meant by the kingdom of God an Ideal 
World, The kingdom was his social ideal. 

IV 

The Kingdom of God — {Continued) 75 

7^^ Extent and Its Content, 

Confusion for lack of distinguishing between 
the extent and the content of the kingdom. 

Extent and content of the kingdom defined. 
Van Oosterzee, Bascom, Westcott, and Peabody 
quoted. 

5 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Of the spiritual and physical elements of the 
kingdom, the former is incomparably the more 
important, but I shall dwell more on the latter 
because almost wholly neglected. 

Jesus always recognized the physical element. 
Jesus insisted on the spiritual — the transformed 
character, not in order to win heaven, but in order 
to w4n the world. The common conception of 
religion entirely foreign to the teaching of Jesus. 

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." 
How much is implied by perfect obedience to 
God's will? Increasing knowledge of his will. 
The revelations of science. F. Herbert Stead 
quoted. 



The Kingdom of God — (Continued) 92 

Corollaries of the True Doctrine. 

1. The kingdom of God is the synthesis of the 
spiritual and the physical. Disputes over hemi- 
spheres of truth. The true doctrine of the kingdom 
puts the two together. Mistake of the church in 
ignoring the physical. Consequences. True place 
of the physical in Christian work. Illustrations 
from "Hell's Kitchen" and the Elmira Reforma- 
tory. Mistake of the social settlement in ignor- 
ing the spiritual. Surreptitious Christianity. 

2. The true doctrine of the kingdom points 
out the relations of God to natural law. 

Three conceptions. Will without law — the 
ancient half truth. Law without will — the scien- 
tific half truth. Will through law — the whole 
truth. 

Results of this view. It recognizes God in his- 
tory. It makes him real in nature and events. 

3. The true doctrine of the kingdom reveals 
the sacredness of the "secular." The old and false 
conception disproved by Jesus' idea of the king- 
dom. No room for the "secular" in an ideal 
world. 

6 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

4. The true doctrine of the kingdom makes 
obvious the true mission of the church. 

The church organized to carry on the work 
which her Master began. The church a means to 
the kingdom as an end. Her mission to make an 
ideal world actual. This involved a change of 
aims and methods. Results which will follow her 
acceptance of her true mission. 

5. The true doctrine of the kingdom affords 
the greatest possible inspiration. 

It gives the inspiration of the widest possible 
outlook, for the kingdom is the outcome of all 
activity, the goal of all progress. 

It gives the inspiration of a glorious ideal and 
a firm confidence that it will be realized, which 
affords patience and courage. 

It gives the inspiration of the noblest fellow- 
ship. Our aim identifies us with the great souls 
of every age and with God himself. 

VI 
The Social Laws of Jesus 119 

Jesus laid hold of three fundamental principles, 
and promulgated them as the fundamental laws of 
the kingdom. 

I. The law of service. Service in nature and 
in society. Jesus aft'orded the supreme example of 
service. The servant is not above his lord. He 
deemed service a privilege, and made it the badge 
of distinction. 

Commercial service and Christian service. In 
commerce the act or the article is the essential 
thing ; Jesus fixes attention on the motive. The 
commercial law is Supply and Demand ; the Chris- 
tian law is Need and Service. The commercial 
spirit gives in order to receive ; the Christian 
spirit receives in order to give. 

The spirit of service and the law of steward- 
ship. 

7 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

2. The law of sacrifice. Includes the entire 
man. Meaning of the "cross" in the New Testa- 
ment. The giving of self and of substance. Sac- 
rifice and stewardship. 

Sacrifice in harmony with the universe. The 
divine order reveals an endless chain of receiving 
and giving. The man who refuses to give himself 
breaks the chain. Benevolence of the law. 

The law includes all men. Not the same gift, 
but the same sacrifice is required of all. "All that 
he hath." This law the noblest tribute ever paid 
to human nature. 

3. The law of love. Christian love is disinter- 
ested. Such love is eternal life. Not evolved but 
transmitted. "Born from above." This new life 
(love) lifts men into the kingdom of God, and 
makes obedience to its laws of disinterested ser- 
vice and sacrifice possible. 

The greater the gift, the greater the blessedness. 
Love loves a hard task. Nathan Hale quoted. 

The true glory of God. Jesus' conception of 
glory. Self-giving the highest glory of God, be- 
cause it is the most perfect manifestation of love. 
The x\rchbishop of Paris. 

The old law of love, and the new law of love. 
"As I have loved you." 

The identifying power of love. It is therefore 
the great integrating power — the supreme social 
law. 

VII 

'he Social Teachings of Jesus Not Accepted 152 

Archbishop Magee on the Sermon on the 
Mount. The social teachings of Jesus "impracti- 
cable" or "inapplicable." By what authority are 
the social laws of Jesus suspended? 

The literal application of Christ's teachings. 
Jesus an Oriental speaking to Orientals. Differ- 
ence in use of language and in customs. Washing 
his disciples' feet. The principles he laid down 
8 



CONTENTS 

universally and eternally binding. His application 
of them may have been temporarily and locally 
binding. When we have grasped his principles 
then there must be implicit and literal obedience. 

The three laws, discussed in preceding chapter, 
not rules, but principles. These laws applied to 
our industrial system. That system not inspired 
by the spirit of service. The motive of trusts ; 
of yellow journalism; of the drink traffic; of 
speculation. What is the motive of competition? 

The business world compared with the profes- 
sional world. Different standards. 

Suppose Jesus Christ were placed in charge of 
some business; what would happen? 

Employers no more selfish than others. The 
general public responsible for the existing sys- 
tem. An anti-bargain brotherhood. Emerson 
quoted. 

No evidence that in business the professed dis- 
ciples of Christ are generally actuated by motives 
different from those of the business world. 

Are professing Christians generally governed 
by the social laws of Jesus in the administration 
of property? Evidence that the duty of steward- 
ship is not commonly accepted. Mark Hopkins 
quoted. Giving and living like princes. Excuse 
given for indulging in luxury. Its fallacy. 

Failure of the pulpit to teach the social laws 
of Jesus. Failure to inculcate the teaching of 
Jesus concerning riches. Service, sacrifice, and 
love have been taught, but not as social laws. 
Hence perversion of the truth, self-deception, and 
worldliness. Misconception of the character of 
God. "Good and regular standing" in the church. 

No sympathy with hostile critics of the church. 
The creation of an ideal world not the conscious 
aim of the average church. The social laws of 
Jesus not inculcated in the average pulpit. 

Only one-half of the gospel preached. Has 
Christianity really been tried? 



CONTENTS 
VIII 

PAGE 

The Social Teachings of Jesus Applied will 
Bring Social Healing i88 

New social spirit needed. Error of many re- 
formers. 

Two essentials of healthy growth. Actual life 
and favorable conditions. Growth in the vegetable 
world. 

Ideal society to conform to the laws of life, 
Herbert Spencer quoted. The social ideal of Jesus. 
Social consciousness brings a social conscience. 

The German Reformation. "Rights" of the 
individual then emphasized. "Duties" the watch- 
word of reform. 

To-day's social questions ethical. The distribu- 
tion of property. Some burning social questions. 
Property involved in all of them. 

Root evil selfishness. Selfish use of property. 
The remedy Christian stewardship. Strikes and 
lockouts. 

Popular discontent. Higher wages needed, but 
will fail without spirit of service. Homestead. 
A Connecticut pastor. Hon. Carroll D. Wright 
quoted. Leclaire. Employers who endeavor to 
express the spirit of service. 

IX 

The Social Teachings of Jesus Applied will 
Bring Spiritual Quickening 212 

The church conserves the past but fails to mold 
the future. Consequent meager growth. Aliena- 
tion of working men. 

Great awakening sorely needed. May be ex- 
pected when intelligently sought. 

Summary of preceding chapters. Supreme need 
of the world, a real God, 

Great awakenings in the past came when neg- 
lected Scriptural truths were faithfully preached. 
10 



CONTENTS 

Social teachings of Jesus very generally misap- 
prehended. The kingdom of God commonly mis- 
understood. An ideal world. This conception of 
the kingdom fits the times. Prevalent materialism. 

Scientific habit of mind cleared the way for the 
doctrine of the kingdom. Elimination of personal 
will by scientific conception of natural law. Laws 
of nature the expression of God's will. 

An imaginary equator. The secular that side 
where most people live. This line wiped out. 

True mission of the church. Physical needs of 
humanity. The Good Samaritan. Outside agen- 
cies the Samaritans to-day. Lower nature reached 
through the higher. The great opportunity of 
the church. 

Religious organizations which reach the masses. 
Methods in common. Miami Association of Ohio. 
"Institutional churches." Thorold Rogers quoted. 

Social doctrine after the French Revolution. 
In Germany. The "Inner Mission" the salvation 
of Germany. 

Church with enthusiasm for humanity. Trans- 
formation would follow. Such a church ought not 
to be peculiar. 

Ministers should give disinterested service. 
Aglow with love to God and man, neglected truths 
would be preached with mighty power. The 
worldly man sees no essential difference between 
Christians and himself. A life of service and 
sacrifice would show a radical difference. 

The time come to apply to existing conditions 
the social teachings of Jesus. 

The "tree of decision." Lady Henry Somerset. 
"Live as though I were, and you shall know that I 
am." God becomes real. 



II 



THE 

NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 



THE SUPREME NEED OF THE 
WORLD 

The supreme need of the world is a real 
God; not the Great Perhaps, but the great 
I am; not a God of yesterday or of to-mor- 
row, but of to-day; not an "absentee'' God, 
but one who is precisely here; not a Sunday 
God, but an every-day God. 

It is much easier to think of God as deal- 
ing with Israel and Egypt, Assyria and 
Babylon, Greece and Rome, than to think of 
him as ruling and judging the United States, 
Great Britain and Russia. It is much easier 
to think of him as sustaining personal rela- 

13 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

tions to Abraham, Moses and David than to 
believe that he has a plan of life for you and 
me. 

In our thought we are constantly limiting 
God in space and time, as if he could be 
more present there than here, as if he could 
be more active then than now, as if he were 
not "the same yesterday, to-day and forever'* 
and everywhere. 

It is easy for us to think of him as attend- 
ing to the great, but not to the small; as 
if he were the creator and governor of solar 
systems, but not of molecules and microbes ; as 
if he were the God of presidents and em- 
perors, but not of common folk. We forget 
that as the infinitely small and the infinitely 
great are alike beyond us, so they are alike 
the objects of knowledge and of power which 
are infinite; and God is as present in the one 
as in the other. 

The world's need of God is as constant and 
as universal as is his presence; but men are 

14 



THE SUPREME NEED OF THE WORLD 

often as unconscious of the one as of the 
other. They know that they want, but many 
do not know that it is God they want; do not 
know that the need of him is as wide as human 
life and as deep as the human heart. 

Now this need of God, rising into con- 
sciousness, is the beginning of rehgion; and re- 
ligion is true and vital in proportion as God is 
correctly and vividly apprehended, and as char- 
acter and life are brought into harmony with 
him. 

Vital religion always realizes God, while 
irreligion or worldliness is a practical denial 
of him; it is living as if God were not; it is 
leaving out of account the greatest fact in 
the universe, which is of course the greatest 
blunder in the universe. 

The teachings, rites and ceremonies of re- 
ligion wxre originally sincere expressions of 
belief and feeling inspired by the sense of 
divinity. But because the repetition of an act 
tends to create a habit, actions which were 

15 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

once full of meaning and purpose become at 
length automatic, and when acts or words are 
emptied of purpose and feeling they become 
meaningless. Thus the forms by which re- 
ligious life is expressed are always in danger of 
degenerating into mere fossils. 

Of course true religion is vital, not mechan- 
ical ; it is life, not form ; it is essence, not mode ; 
it is spirit, not method. When, therefore, the 
life, the essence, the spirit, all of which spring 
from the apprehension of God, have departed, 
then religious institutions, creeds, rituals, cus- 
toms, may all coexist with utter worldliness; 
and the way to break the power of worldliness 
is tO' get a fresh and vivid apprehension of 
God. 

Moreover, religion needs to change the 
form of its expression from time to time in 
order to adjust itself to changed conditions. 
Life must always be adapted to its environ- 
ment — the wing to the air, the foot to the 
ground, the fin to the water, the vegetation to 

i6 



THE SUPREME NEED OF THE WORLD 

the climate. If environment essentially changes, 
life must adapt itself or perish; and this is as 
true of institutional, as of vegetable, or animal 
life. The life remains essentially the same, 
but its form varies with changing conditions. 

Now God is the spiritual life of the world, 
and religion is an expression of that life. The 
form in which it expresses itself is conditioned 
by civilization, which may be called its environ- 
ment. Civilization changes from generation to 
generation; there are new habits of thought, 
new modes of life, to which religion, with its 
institutions, its creeds, its methods, must adapt 
itself or become fossilized and dead. 

One of the greatest needs of every generation 
is to have its inherited institutions vitalised; 
and this is supremely true of religious institu- 
tions. That is, they must be readapted to the 
changed conditions and new needs of the times. 
The greater the progress of civilization, there- 
fore, the more imperative is the necessity of a 
new apprehension of God that will make him 

17 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

real — a new inspiration of spiritual life that 
will vivify religious institutions. 

All prophets, whether of ancient or modern 
days, are prophets of God. They are the men 
who with clearer vision than their fellows see 
God in relation to their own times ; and it is see- 
ing him thus which makes him real. Their mes- 
sages are, therefore, the same in substance, viz., 
God in his relations to human life; but the 
messages of true prophets vary in form because 
they are always adapted to the different needs 
of different ages. "As the prophet whose 
prophecy is new in substance is no prophet, 
but a deceiver, so the prophet whose prophecy 
is old in form is no prophet, but a plagiarist.'' * 

All great spiritual awakenings are awaken- 
ings to the reality of God. It is the apprehen- 
sion of him in his relations to existing condi- 
tions which makes him real; and when God 
becomes real, spiritual truths and spiritual 

^ "Ecce Homo," p. 28. 
18 



THE SUPREME NEED OF THE WORLD 

values become real; and spiritual life is man- 
ifested in spiritual power. 

Do we find that our churches lack power 
though full of machinery? There is *'a wheel 
in the middle of a wheel," but there is lacking 
''the spirit of the living creature in the wheels/' 
Life produces organization, but organization 
does not produce life. A real God is what 
our churches need, and when they apprehend 
him as a personal and present reality, they will 
have life and power. 

The tendency to worldliness, like the attrac- 
tion of gravitation, is a universal downward 
pull, and is well-nigh as constant. It is in no 
way peculiar to our own age, of course, but 
it has had a threefold reinforcement in modern 
times, which makes it peculiarly difficult for 
this generation to apprehend God with vivid- 
ness. 

I. The unprecedented material development 
of the past century has created a materialistic 
civilization, to which spiritual truths are dim. 

19 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

To most men the great realities are those which 
can be seen and handled, weighed and meas- 
ured, bought and sold. Machinery has mul- 
tiplied man's productive power many fold. 
There has been an amazing increase of wealth. 
Never before has there been such a scale of 
living among the million. What were once 
luxuries beyond the reach of the rich are now 
become the every-day conveniences of the mul- 
titude. Luxuries which appeal to every sense 
have become common; and luxury encourages 
sensuality, and the sensual cannot see God. 
Thus materialism has blinded men's spiritual 
eyes. 

2. During the past century the world has 
acquired a new and radically different habit 
of thought, whose sign is an interrogation 
point, and whose effects have become general 
during the past generation. It is both a cause 
and an effect of the scientific method, which 
has increased the world's knowledge as much 
as machinery has increased its wealth. 

20 



THE SUPREME NEED OF THE WORLD 

The scientific habit of mind does not respect 
authority, is hostile to dogma, and encourages 
doubt. This iconoclast has passed through the 
temple of knowledge (or rather of supposed 
knowledge; it was really the temple of belief), 
and has broken many an idol of popular wor- 
ship. Indeed it has largely destroyed the old 
temple, and is building it anew and on different 
foundations. 

The scientific spirit is by no means hostile 
to faith. The destruction of dogma was 
inevitable; the destruction of faith was inci- 
dental. While the two are essentially different, 
they are intimately related. Faith is the water 
of life, while dogma is only the cup which con- 
tains it. It is the water that is life-giving, but 
breaking the earthen vessel has spilled its 
precious contents. 

Theology is the interpretation of the facts 
of religion; and the great increase of knowl- 
edge during the past fifty years has thrown 
new light on the facts and necessitated a new 

21 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

interpretation of them. When silver passes 
into solution it loses its form and becomes 
invisible in the dissolving fluid. It seems to 
be lost outright, but it is all there. Now the- 
ology has for several years been in a state of 
solution, and many thought it was gone 
forever. It had lost its form, but the material 
was all safe, and it is now beginning to recrys- 
talize. The disappearance of dogma, however, 
naturally and inevitably created a feeling of 
alarm and an atmosphere of doubt. 

3. A third cause of the loss of spiritual 
apprehension, closely related to the preceding, 
has been the rapid growth of natural science, 
which has established the universal reign of law, 
and has been unable, with microscope, scalpel 
or crucible, to find in the realm of nature a 
Personal Will. 

The progress of the physical sciences has 
served to emphasize materialism, to demon- 
strate the value of the scientific method, and, 
to many minds, by establishing the reign of 

22 



THE SUPREME NEED OF THE WORLD 

law, has seemed to drive God out of his uni- 
verse. 

The loss of the sense of personaUty in our 
relations with God is fatal to piety. ''Persons 
are love's world." Without individual ac- 
countability, there can be no sense of sin; 
without individual communion, there can be 
no prayer ; without individual care and leading, 
there can be no divine providence. There are 
multitudes of intelligent, Christian men to-day 
who consider belief in answers to prayer or 
in divine providence as quite superstitious. 
The reign of law has been substituted for the 
reign of God. Natural laws come between 
him and us. These laws are general; our 
relations to God, therefore, must be general 
rather than personal. 

Now the very center and life of the Christian 
religion is a divine person; and spiritual life 
depends on personal relations to him. The 
word is not, Accept certain principles, but 
''Follow me/' not, I will show you the way, 

23 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

reveal the truth and lead you unto life, but 
'1 am the way, the truth and the life/' He 
does not, like Paul, discourse concerning the 
resurrection, but says, ''I am the resurrection/' 
Not his teachings are to be the comfort and 
strength of his people, but he himself, "Lo, / 
am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world/' And when the nations are judged, 
men are approved or condemned not by some 
abstract rule of right, but by a test wholly 
personal. '7 was an hungred, and ye gave 
me meat," or, ''Ye gave me no meat/' 

It follows, therefore, that to take away the 
sense of personal relationship to God is to 
exclude him from our lives, and to devitalize 
our religion. 

Thus the materialism of the day, the preva- 
lent atmosphere of doubt, and the substitution 
of general laws for a Personal Will in the 
government of the world, have all served to 
reinforce the spirit of worldliness, which is 
practical atheism. Men cannot be moved with- 

24 



THE SUPREME NEED OF THE WORLD 

out motives, and when God is unreal, the 
leverage of Christian truth has lost its ful- 
crum. 

Now these three causes, discussed above, 
which for half a century have served as the 
aUies of worldliness, may each one be trans- 
formed into a handmaid of religion. 

Materialism is neither peculiar to wealth nor 
its necessary accompaniment. The destitute 
savage probably lives for the material and is 
its slave, while on the other hand it is possible 
to command every material good and yet live 
a spiritual life, because the material is sub- 
ordinated to the higher nature. 

In man, the physical is not an enemy of the 
spiritual. When, life is normal, the body is 
the servant of the spirit. It is through the 
body that the spirit expresses itself, and it is 
through the body that it is reached and influ- 
enced. In like manner, when we appreciate the 
relations of the physical or the material to the 
kingdom of God, we shall see that rightly 

35 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

used it is not a hindrance but a help, a medium 
through which influences may be brought to 
bear on the spiritual life of the world for the 
upbuilding of the kingdom. Indeed, if space 
permitted, it might be shown that the material 
progress of the past century will prove in God's 
hands one of the most powerful agencies in 
promoting the coming of his kingdom in the 
world. 

Again, the new habit of thought, or the 
scientific method, certainly produced an atmos- 
phere of paralyzing doubt; but this was part 
of the necessary cost of progress, the natural 
penalty of credulity; for believing what one 
ought to doubt often leads to doubting what 
one ought to believe. 

Real knowledge can never be dangerous to 
true faith. The man who is afraid of light 
confesses thereby that he suspects his own 
creed. There is now appearing a new faith 
which is courageous because it is intelligent. 
It does not fear the light, because it was grown 

26 



THE SUPREME NEED OF THE WORLD 

in the light. That is not real faith, but super- 
stition, which flourishes in darkness or the 
twilight. 

"Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell; 
That mind and soul, according well, 
May make one music as before. 

But vaster."^ 

The new faith and reason have no quarrel. 
The notes they strike are different but har- 
monious. 

If the scientific method has destroyec 
dogmas, it has led us back to Christ, back 
to the simplicity which is in him, and back 
to the kingdom of God, which was the great 
subject of his teaching; and if doubt paralyzes 
activity, a true conception of the kingdom 
inspires enthusiasm. 

Again, if the reign of law has taken away a 
God who visited men from time to time in 
''special'' providences, we find when it is cor- 

^"In Memoriam.'' 
27 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

rectly understood that it has given to us an 
immanent God, in whom we live and move and 
have our being — one who is not far enough 
from us even to be near, but who lives within 
us. 

A God of law is infinitely more worthy of 
trust and of worship than a god of caprice. He 
may be far better known and, therefore, become 
more real to us. Jesus said, ''Henceforth I 
call you not servants ; for the servant knoweth 
not what his lord doeth; but I have called you 
friends" (Jno. xv. 15). Natural laws, which 
are seen to be simply the divine methods, tell 
to us the story of God's activities for ages past, 
and reveal to us in good measure his purposes 
for the future, thus taking us into his confi- 
dence as friends, and enabling us to become 
intelligent and efficient co-laborers with him 
unto the kingdom. 

Thus it appears that what is needed to-day 
is to interpret God to men in the terms of 
present-day knowledge, and to present him in 

28 



THE SUPREME NEED OF THE WORLD 

vital relations to the life of our own times. 
When this is done, he will become real. 

This conclusion is justified not only by a 
priori reasoning, but also by history, which 
will be shown in the following chapter. 



2Q 



II 

THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

The laws of growth seem to be much the 
. same for soul and body, for the individual and 
for the nation ; but moral and spiritual develop- 
ment differ in an important particular from 
intellectual and physical. 

The latter are more gradual. There are of 
course periods of quiescence and again of 
quickening, both in physical and in intellectual 
growth, but the progress is imperceptible from 
day to day. On the other hand, moral and 
spiritual changes which are quite revolutionary 
may take place in an hour. It is true that the 
processes which lead up to these changes are 
usually slow, but the changes themselves — the 

30 



THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

outward expressions of the inward life — are 
apt to* be sudden, and are often startling. 

Ideas, like plants, grow in the light. Truth 
which is merely speculative may stimulate in- 
tellectual growth, but it sustains no necessary 
relation to life. Moral truth, however, bears 
directly on conduct. When I learn that things 
which are equal to the same thing are equal 
to each other, it lays on me no obligation of 
any sort. But when I learn that God is my 
father and that man is my brother, then I 
ought to do something about it. Moral truth, 
as distinguished from speculative, is truth 
from the knowledge of which follows the obli- 
gation to do something. 

Now man is a bundle of habits. Our activ- 
ities run in habits as rivers flow^ in channels. 
The channel of habit is formed by the stream 
of activity, and then guides that stream. The 
deepening channel, cut by the continued flow, 
makes it increasingly difficult to turn the 
stream from its wonted course. That is, a 

31 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

habit once acquired is self -perpetuating, so that 
only extraordinary conditions can turn the 
stream of activity into a new channel. 

A small increase in the knowledge of moral 
truth is usually insufficient to modify an estab- 
lished habit. Increasing moral light, however, 
causes uneasiness, until it becomes clear, at 
length, that we are in possession of moral 
truth which demands a change in our life. 
Then there is apt to be more or less of a 
struggle, the issue of which is either the tri- 
umph of the old habit and the deterioration 
of character, or the breaking up of the old 
habit of doing or not doing, and an expression 
of the new light in a new life with changed 
activities, which of course strengthens char- 
acter. This process is repeated, over and over, 
so that moral and spiritual growth usually 
shows a series of changes more or less 
cataclysmaL 

Because this is true of the individual it is 
also true of society. Its inherited customs 

32 



THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

become its confirmed habits. Established 
usage disguises and sanctions many evils, so 
that they are not only tolerated but clung to 
tenaciously. New light meets first with indif- 
ference and then with opposition. Increasing 
light causes increasing uneasiness until, at 
length, a change more or less revolutionary 
transforms society. Thus the moral and re- 
ligious progress of the world is marked by 
periods, inaugurated by what are known as 
reformations or great revivals. 

The physical growth of a nation should be 
accompanied or followed by a corresponding 
intellectual and moral development, that the 
greater responsibilities and temptations, which 
accompany increased riches and power, may 
not lack adequate wisdom or a temperate self- 
restraint. Repeatedly, though not invariably, 
a period of extraordinary material prosperity 
has been followed or accompanied by one of 
exceptional intellectual and spiritual activity. 
The nineteenth century certainly was charac- 

33 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

terized by a material development altogether 
marvelous and scarcely less than miraculous; 
and intellectual progress was hardly less re- 
markable than material. The scientific method 
has made us rich in knowledge. I suppose it 
is safe to say that the greater part of the 
world's knowledge to-day is less than one 
hundred years old. Of course the progress of 
knowledge is destructive as well as construc- 
tive. The old structure of belief had to be 
destroyed before the new could take its place. 
The intellectual progress of the age, therefore, 
as we have already seen, necessarily involved 
the prevalence of doubt, and consequently 
served to intensify the materialism which was 
the natural legacy of an age of unparalleled 
material progress. 

The question, then, arises whether this great 
advance along physical and intellectual lines 
is to be followed by a new advance along spir- 
itual lines. 

The advent of the new century was hailed, 
34 



THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

both in Great Britain and America, as a fitting 
time for a new awakening to the things of 
the spirit, a keener sense of reahties which 
sustain no relation to the yard-stick, the scales 
or the crucible, a fuller appreciation of values 
that are never quoted on the stock exchange. 
Earnest and extended efforts were made on 
both sides of the Atlantic, and especially in 
England, to arouse the conscience and to 
quicken the religious life. Great meetings 
were held; but in England the attendance was 
almost exclusively that of professed Christians, 
while in the United States the number of con- 
versions was apparently no greater than is 
expected to accompany the regular activities of 
the churches every winter. 

Is there to be during the twentieth century 
a mighty religious awakening, such as occurred 
in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, and in both the first and second half 
of the nineteenth? These great movements, 
which lifted nations and civilizations to a 

35 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

higher plane, did not come uncaused or hap- 
hazard. It is as easy to invoke them as to 

" , . . call spirits from the vasty deep. 
But will they come when you do call for them?'' 

Not simply for the calling. Means must 
be adapted to ends. The law which gov- 
erns such movements must be obeyed. The 
w^ay of the Lord must be prepared, his paths 
must be made straight. 

These movements differed widely in charac- 
ter, in method, and in the conditions from 
which they sprang; some of them had political 
as wxll as religious elements, whose causes 
were complex and remote; and yet the study 
of them reveals the fact that each of these great 
religions awakenings came in connection with 
the preaching of a neglected Scriptural truth 
which zvas precisely adapted to the peculiar, 
needs of the times. 

A rapid review of these movem.ents w^ill, I 
think, suffice to establish the above generaliza- 
tion. 

36 



THE LAW. OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

The Sixteenth Century, 
At the time of the great awakening, known 
as the German Reformation, the individual was 
wholly overshadowed by the church; his con- 
science was in her keeping, his liberties were 
sacrificed to her absolutism, his salvation was 
dependent on her sacraments. A truth was 
needed, the acceptance of which would free 
the individual from bondage to the church and 
bring him into right personal relations with 
God. 

When Luther was at Rome toiling up 
'Tilate's Stairway" on his knees, and the text, 
'The just shall live by faith,'' flashed into his 
mind, it came as a revelation, and he saw that 
man must be saved, not by ceremonials nor 
sacraments nor works, but by a vital faith. 
It followed that the personal relation of every 
soul to Jesus Christ was fundamental, and the 
central truth preached by Luther and the other 
reformers was justification by faith. 

The prevalence of this teaching, heretofore 
37 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

neglected, established the importance of the 
individual, won for him liberty of conscience, 
and made his salvation subjective — a matter 
of character. Thus the peculiar needs of the 
times called for a truth w^hich had long been 
lost to sight, and the great awakening came 
when that truth was powerfully preached. 

The Seventeenth Century. 

The next great spiritual movement came in 
the following century, and is known as the 
Puritan revival. 

Civil power, which under the feudal system 
had been widely distributed among the nobles, 
gradually passed from weaker to stronger and 
fewer hands, until now it was centralized in 
the king, who claimed by divine right an 
authority superior to all human control. Laud 
and the churchmen whom he led were abject 
in their dependence on the crown. "They 
erected the most dangerous pretensions of the 
monarchy into religious dogmas. Their 

38 



THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

model, Bishop Andrews, had declared James 
to have been inspired by God. They preached 
passive obedience to the worst tyranny." ^ 
The crown claimed the right to dictate the 
people's faith and the form of their worship, 
thus arrogating to itself some of the prerog- 
atives claimed by the Roman church, against 
which the reformers protested in the previous 
century. The liberating truth, therefore, which 
Luther had proclaimed was again needed, and 
it was again revived. 

Furthermore, a new emphasis was laid on 
the doctrine of the divine sovereignty. The 
king was the head of the church as well as 
of the state. Men were awed by the sacred- 
ness of their sovereign. Doubtless many of 
his subjects deemed it a much more serious 
matter to offend against him than to sin 
against God. The sovereignty of the king 
was real ; its sanctions were real, and were 
being suffered by many in their own persons 

' Green's "History of the English People," Sec. 989. 
39 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

and in their estates. When, therefore, the 
Puritans proclaimed that God was the head 
of the church, and that conscience was answer- 
able only to him, this revival of the truth of 
the divine sovereignty made God a living God ; 
it made his law real and its violation heinous. 
Thus the faithful preaching of an obscured 
Scriptural truth, precisely adapted to the pecu- 
liar needs of the times, aroused the conscience 
and aw^oke the religious life of the nation. 

The Eighteenth Century. 

The next great revival was that in v/hich 
the Wesleys and Whitfield were the great 
figures. 

The reaction which followed the Restora- 
tion led to a rapid moral deterioration. 
George 11. illustrated the licentiousness of the 
court and Walpole the corruption of the gov- 
ernment, while indecencies, immoralities and 
barbarities abounded among the people. Re- 
ligion had lost all spirituality. Isaac Taylor 

40 



THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

calls the church of this period '^a fair carcass ;" 
and Blackstone says that he went to hear every 
preacher of note in London, and that there was 
not one whose discourse indicated whether he 
was a follower of Confucius, or of Mohammed, 
or of Christ. Religion seemed to consist in 
its outward and formal observances. The 
great spiritual truths of Christianity were neg- 
lected. There was a profound lack of spiritual 
earnestness. The teachers of religion had 
little experience of its power. Wesley himself 
had been in the ministry thirteen years, and 
had served as a missionary in Georgia for two 
years before he had a deep experience of the 
spiritual truths of the gospel. He tells us in 
the journal of his homeward voyage that he 
'Svho went to America to convert others was 
never himself converted to God.'' 

His conversion took place just after his 
return to England, and from that time on "he 
had a forgotten gospel to preach — the gospel 
by which men were to be converted, as he had 

41 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

been, and to be made 'new creatures/ " * 
"The doctrines which Wesley revived, restated 
and emphasized in his sermons and writings 
are present personal salvation by faith, the 
witness of the Spirit, and sanctification." ^ 
Thus historians of Methodism refer to a new 
life, beginning with a new birth, as "revived" 
doctrines, "a forgotten gospel." 

Evidently these neglected Scriptural truths 
were precisely adapted to the religious and 
moral needs of the times, and when they were 
faithfully proclaimed the great awakening of 
the century came. 

The First Half of the Nineteenth Century, 
Among the notable evangelists identified 

with the great religious movements of the first 

half of the nineteenth century Charles G. 

Finne}^ was the central figure. 

The doctrine of the divine sovereignty had 

* Encyc. Britannica, art. "Methodism." 

^ Dr. H. K. Carroll in Schaff-Herzog "Encyc. of Re- 
ligious Knowledge." 

42 



THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

triumphed. In this country the church had 
no head save Jesus Christ. Conscience was 
accountable to God only. But the doctrine of 
the divine sovereignty was held in such a way 
as to destroy all appreciation of human free- 
dom, resulting in a widespread paralysis of 
conscience and will. Multitudes were waiting 
with folded hands for God to come and con- 
vert them. 

Then Finney thundered forth the neglected 
truth of man's free agency and guilt, and the 
retribution due to sin. He aimed at the con- 
science and will, and never ceased to emphasize 
the responsibility of the sinner. He says in 
his autobiography, 'Tnstead of telling sinners 
to use the means of grace and pray for a new 
heart, we called on them to make themselves 
a new heart and a new spirit, and pressed the 
duty of instant surrender to God." ^ 

This message, which is as old as the Hebrew 
prophets, had been so long neglected that it 

® "Memoirs/' p. 189. 
43 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

was forgotten and seemed new when Mr. 
Finney began to proclaim it. Its precise adap- 
tation to the pecuHar needs of the times was 
shown by the results of its application. Con- 
science was so aroused that men were utterly 
overcome by its terrors. On one occasion, 
when preaching in a school-house, he tells us 
that an awful solemnity settled down upon the 
congregation and people began to fall on the 
floor and cry for mercy. "If I had had a 
sword in each hand/' he says, "I could not 
have cut them off their seats as fast as they 
fell." And in a few minutes nearly the whole 
congregation were either on their knees or 
prostrate. Similar manifestations of over- 
whelming conviction were not uncommon. 

Thus again did neglected Scriptural truth, 
which precisely fitted religious and moral con- 
ditions, awake the sleeping conscience of 
multitudes. 

The revival which began in 1857 and con- 
tinued until i860 may be called a sort of con- 

44 



THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

necting link between the great awakenings of 
the first and second halves of the century, 
though in type it rather belonged to the former. 

The Last Half of the Nineteenth Century. 
During the first two-thirds of the century 
profound changes took place, unparalleled in 
the history of civilization. The industrial 
revolution had produced radically new condi- 
tions. Men had begun to live at a much more 
rapid pace ; they were being driven by the new 
machinery which they had produced. Steam 
and electricity had proved to be whip and spur. 
Life had become much more intense. A 
change gradually took place in the nervous 
organization, and men grew keenly sensitive 
to suffering. Philanthropic movements mul- 
tiplied. Men became more considerate of 
dumb animals than their grandfathers had been 
of human beings. It was only a few genera- 
tions since the most enlightened court in 
Christendom had sentenced men to be boiled 

45 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

to death in oil. Now cruelty to a horse or 
a dog was a crime. 

Such a change in human sensibilities could 
not fail to demand a modification of the stern 
theology of the Puritans. The ^'terrors of the 
Lord" had been the chief reliance to persuade 
men. 

When the great religious awakenings came, 
in which Mr. Moody was the leader, a new 
note was heard. It was the long neglected 
doctrine of the love of God. Not only had 
the nation become more keenly sensitive to 
suffering, but it had just passed through the 
baptism of war. There had been one smitten 
in well-nigh every home. Millions of hearts 
were longing for consolation. At such a time 
and under such conditions the tender truth of 
the love of God could melt hearts which no 
blows could break. This Scriptural truth, long 
obscured by theology, was precisely what was 
needed ; and notwithstanding the headlong rush 
of business, men stopped and turned aside to 

46 



THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

hear that "God so loved the world." This 
message persuaded multitudes who had become 
indifferent to the staple presentations of the 
pulpit. 

Again the preaching of neglected truth 
peculiarly adapted to the times made God and 
the great spiritual verities real to men. 

Be it observed, Moody did not repeat the 
message of Finney, nor did Finney repeat that 
of Wesley, nor Wesley that of the Puritans, 
nor did the Puritans simply reiterate the great 
doctrine of Luther and the Reformation. Each 
dealt more or less with the great body of Chris- 
tian truth, of course, but each had a distinctive 
message, which was peculiarly adapted to his 
own times and, therefore, made God real to 
the men of his generation. Nor did the 
prophet of one age employ the methods of his 
predecessors. Though the substance was the 
same, the form and method were new because 
the times were new. The men who to-day 
expect to reproduce Moody's results by repro- 

47 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

ducing his message and his methods will fail 
as completely as Moody would have failed, if 
he had been a mere imitation of Finney. 
Such men, as the author of ''Ecce Homo'' 
says, are plagiarists rather than prophets. 
The true prophet sees God in his own times 
and in relation to the peculiar needs of his 
own da)^, and thus makes others see him. 

The new form of the message arouses oppo- 
sition and very likely attracts stones, but when 
results demonstrate its truth and its power, 
the next generation builds the prophet's 
sepulcher. 

If the above brief review of the great awak- 
enings of the past four hundred years sustains 
our generalization, does it not afford a reason- 
able basis for future reckoning? And if neg- 
lected Scriptural truth precisely adapted to the 
peculiar needs of our own times can be pointed 
out, is there not a strong presumption that 
the next great spiritual awakening will come 
when this truth is faithfully preached? 

48 



THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL QUICKENING 

It is quite obvious that the great questions 
peculiar to our times are social. The indus- 
trial revolution has produced a social revolu- 
tion ; we have passed, within three generations, 
from an individualistic to a social or collective 
type of civilization. Relations which a hun- 
dred years ago were few and simple are now 
become many and complex. New questions 
concerning rights and duties are being asked. 
Society is gaining self-consciousness, which 
marks one of the most important steps in the 
progress of the race. We are beginning to 
see that society lives one vast life, of which 
every man is a part. We are gaining what 
Walter Besant calls ''the sense of humanity." 
We are discovering that life is something 
larger and farther related than we had thought ; 
and with this perception of wider and mul- 
tiplied relations comes a new sense of social 
obligations. That is, a social conscience is 
growing, though as yet it is uninstructed. 

The wonderful increase of wealth and of 
49 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

knowledge during the past century has served 
to create a new discontent and to kindle a new 
hope. It has transferred the golden age of 
the world from the past to the future; and 
this golden age, yet to come, constitutes a new 
social ideal. 

In the succeeding chapters it will be shown 
that the social ideal of Jesus is precisely what 
is needed to inform and spiritualize and per- 
fect this new social ideal, and that the social 
laws of Jesus are precisely what is needed to 
educate the new social conscience. 



50 



Ill 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

THE SOCIAL IDEAL OF JESUS 

There is taking place a "rediscovery of 
Christ" which is of profound significance. 
This return to the Master means a clearer con- 
ception of his character, a truer understanding 
of his teaching, a larger comprehension of his 
mission, a more loyal surrender to his author- 
ity. It means also the gaining of Christ's 
point of view. 

What we see depends very largely on the 
point from which we look. When we gain a 
new point of view, of course the landscape itself 
does not change, but our apprehension of it 

51 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

does. Some objects become more prominent, 
some less so; some disappear altogether, while 
some new features are seen. So in the world 
of ideas, established truths of course remain 
fixed, but with a new point of view our mental 
perspective changes; truths are seen in new 
relations; some assume greater importance 
than before, and some less ; we gain some new 
ideas, and some old conceptions drop out of 
sight. 

It makes a great difference what our point 
of view is. The largeness of our vision and 
the accuracy of our knowledge are conditioned 
by it. The eye may be held so low that a 
stump will hide a mountain; and the higher 
we rise, the more distinctly do the great feat- 
ures of the landscape stand out, and the more 
perfectly do we comprehend their relations to 
each other. 

Now no Christian surely can doubt that 
Jesus occupied the correct point of view, that 
in his perspective truths were seen in their 

52 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

right relations and true proportions; and it is 
certain that his great theme was The Kingdom 
of God, 

His very first public utterance related to the 
kingdom. After the record of his temptation, 
we read: "From that time Jesus began to 
preach, and to say, Repent; for the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand" (Matt. iv. 17). The 
Sermon on the Mount, which has been called 
his great inaugural address, referred to the 
kingdom repeatedly, beginning with its open- 
ing sentence. In that discourse he states and 
repeats the condition of entrance into the 
kingdom, tells who will be greatest and least 
in it, and gives practical illustrations of the 
spirit of obedience required of its members. 
We learn further that the kingdom was his 
habitual theme: "And Jesus went about all 
Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and 
preaching the gospel of the kingdom" (Matt, 
iv. 23). And again at a later period we are 
told that "Jesus went about all the cities and 

53 



' THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

villages, teaching in their synagogues, and 
preaching the gospel of the kingdom" (Matt, 
ix. 35). He sent forth the seventy, who,, 
whether accepted or rejected, were to pro- 
claim everywhere: **The kingdom of God is 
come nigh unto you'' (Luke x. i-ii). He 
commissioned the twelve disciples, and his 
charge to them was : "As ye go, preach, saying : 
The kingdom of heaven is at hand'' (Matt. 
X. 7). He declares that he himself was sent 
to preach the kingdom of God (Luke iv. 43). 
When the disciples asked the Master to teach 
them how to pray, after the words, ''Hallowed 
be thy name," the very first petition was, "Thy 
kingdom come." From the later words, "Give 
us this day our daily bread," it appears that 
this was intended to be a daily prayer ; that is, 
we are taught to pray daily for the coming 
of the kingdom. And if we ought to pray for 
it daily, we ought to work for it daily; so the 
Master thought, for in the same discourse he 
said: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God" 

54 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

(Matt. vi. 33). This does not mean, as has 
been so often supposed, 'Tirst become a Chris- 
tian." Seeking the kingdom does not mean 
trying to enter the kingdom. Jesus has just 
been saying, Do not make provision for your 
natural wants the great concern of life. 
After these things do the nations seek. 
That is, the nations make food and raiment 
the great object of daily concern, but do you 
make the kingdom of God, and its extension in 
the world, the great object of your daily 
endeavor, and then all these things shall be 
added. ''Seek ye first the kingdom" means 
seek it first to-day and to-morrow and all the 
time. Prayer and endeavor should always 
keep step. If either lags behind the other, 
both suffer detriment. Thus Jesus teaches that 
the kingdom is to be the first subject of daily 
prayer, and the first object of daily effort. 

The parables of our Lord are largely occu- 
pied with the kingdom, its nature, its exceeding 
value, the method and conditions of its growth, 

55 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

its comprehensiveness, its final triumph. Its 
many aspects are represented by many com- 
parisons. The kingdom of heaven is likened 
unto a man w^hich sowed good seed in his 
field (Matt. xiii. 24). It is like a grain of 
mustard seed (verse 31); it is like leaven 
(verse 33) ; it is like treasure hid in a field 
(verse 44) ; it is like a merchantman, seeking 
goodly pearls (verse 45) ; it is like a net cast 
into the sea (verse 47) ; it is like a certain king 
which would take account of his servants 
(Matt, xviii. 23) ; it is like a householder 
(Matt. XX. i) ; it is like a king which made a 
marriage for his son (Matt. xxii. 2) ; it is like 
ten virgins (Matt. xxv. i); it is like a man 
travelling into a far country (Matt. xxv. 14). 
The whole book of Matthew is no longer 
than many popular lectures. One can read it 
in an hour and twenty or thirty minutes; and 
yet in this one book Christ refers to the king- 
dom no less than forty-five times, and in the 
synoptic Gospels over a hundred times. 

56 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

That the kingdom was Christ's habitual sub- 
ject of discourse is shown by the fact that his 
instruction is called ^'the word of the kingdom" 
(Matt. xiii. 19), and that explaining his teach- 
ings to the disciples was malting known to them 
"the mysteries of the kingdom" (Matt. xiii. 
11), and that when they understood his teach- 
ings they were ''instructed unto the kingdom" 
(Matt. xiii. 52). This moreover was the 
message which they were to carry to the ends 
of the earth. "And this gospel of the king- 
dom shall be preached in all the world for a 
witness unto all nations" (Matt. xxiv. 14). 
x\fter his passion, during the interval between 
his resurrection and ascension, his theme was 
still the same, for we are told (Acts i. 3) that 
he was seen of the apostles forty days, "speak- 
ing of the things pertaining to the kingdom 
of God." Evidently, from first to last, the 
burden of his discourse was the kingdom. 

It is clear, then, that to misunderstand the 
doctrine of the kingdom is to misunderstand 

57 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

the message of Jesus, it is to misunderstand 
Christianity, it is to misunderstand the mis- 
sion of the church, it is to misunderstand 
Christ's interpretation of life; and the doctrine 
of the kingdom has been misunderstood for 
centuries. The conception of the kingdom of 
God, even among Christians, is generally 
vague and very commonly erroneous. 

Thus appears the profound significance of 
the return to Christ, the rediscovery of the 
kingdom of God. I venture to think it is the 
most thought-compelling, the most zeal-inspir- 
ing, the most world-transforming of all the 
great movements of this wonder-crowded 
age. 

From the point of view of this rediscovered 
kingdom the Bible must be restudied,*^ and our 
conception of Christianity must be reconsidered, 
and history must be reinterpreted, and theology 
must be rereasoned, and our philosophy of 

^ For an admirable study of the Bible from this point 
of view see *The Kingdom of God/' by F. H. Stead. 

58 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

life must be reconstructed/ and church methods 
must be readjusted, and the industrial system 
must be reformed, and society must be reorgan- 
ized. All this is involved in the new Christian 
renaissance. 

The common belief in the kingdom of God 
has been much like many men's belief in im- 
mortality — something ghostly, mysterious, in- 
tangible and vague, and, so far as each 
individual man is concerned, something future, 
very remotely related, if at all, to the hard 
facts of every-day life. Such a belief, of 
course, could have no appreciable influence on 
character or conduct. 

Many have supposed that the kingdom of 
God was identical with heaven, the home of 
the blessed dead. This mistake is doubtless 
due to the expression so common in the Gospel 
of Matthew, the ''kingdom of heaven," which 
is synonymous with the ''kingdom of God." 

® For a philosophy of life from this point of view see 
my "The Times and Young Men." 

59 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

By those holding this view the importance 
attached to the kingdom in the teachings of 
Christ is understood to emphasize the import- 
ance of gaining heaven. To seek the kingdom 
is to seek heaven, and to enter into it is to 
gain heaven at last. The great object of 
endeavor is to "save the soul.'' It results 
naturally in a subjective type of religion, and 
an individualistic Christianity. It is acknowl- 
edged that Christians have duties to their 
fellows, but it is exceedingly difficult to arouse 
them to earnest and sustained activity in behalf 
of others. If religion is deep enough to 
become the real business of life, that business 
is to gain heaven. Many have, therefore, sep- 
arated themselves from the world, and have 
sought heaven by way of the hermit's cave 
and the cell of the monk. Instead of con- 
quering the, they ran away from it. 

This conception of Christianity finds its 
most perfect exposition in the wonderful alle- 
gory of Bunyan. Christian leaves his city to 

60 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

its destruction and devotes his life to gaining a 
destination of personal safety. 

Another extremely common misconception 
of the kingdom identifies it with the visible 
church. Thus the church, instead of being a 
means to the kingdom as an end, becomes an 
end in itself. It devotes itself to its own 
upbuilding. It says to men, 'The church 
needs you.'' It sets apart ministers, priests, 
elders, deacons and deaconesses ''for the ser- 
vice of the church.'' People are urged to 
attend church in order ''to support its services." 
The usual question with church-extension 
societies is, What is the best location for the 
proposed church ? Where will it soonest reach 
self-support? The thought is not. Where 
will the church best serve the community, but 
where will the community best serve the 
church ? 

Now Christ pleased not himself. He came 
''not to be ministered unto, but to minister." 
How completely, then, does a self-seeking 

6i 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

church misrepresent its Master? This is one 
of the chief reasons why the church has lost 
its hold on the multitude. Workingmen gen- 
erally believe that the church is selfish, that 
it seeks them for its own sake rather than 
theirs. I am sure their conclusions are too 
sweeping, but I am equally sure that there 
is too much ground for them. 

Identifying the kingdom with the visible 
church results in the sin of ecclesiasticism, 
and the wretched strife of sectarianism. Men 
quarrel over "my" church and ''your" church 
and the ''true" church, but we never hear of 
"my" kingdom or of "your" kingdom. The 
kingdom belongs to Christ; and that is the 
supreme end, to which the church is only a 
means. If men had remembered this, they 
would have seen that citizenship in the king- 
dom is more than membership in "my" church 
or "yours." When a church is thrust in 
where there are too many already, it grows, 
if at all, at the expense of the kingdom. This 

62 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

is because ecclesiasticism '^seeks first'' the 
denomination instead of the kingdom, imagin- 
ing that they are identical. 

Further, the identification of the kingdom 
with the visible church has led to the corruption 
of the latter. It is evident enough that within 
its membership there are tares and wheat 
growing together; and when it is proposed to 
gather out the former, men quote Christ's 
words concerning the kingdom, '^Nay; lest 
while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also 
the wheat with them. Let both grow together 
until the harvest" (Matt. xiii. 29, 30). 

Another common error is to identify the 
kingdom with the invisible church, which in 
its effects is much the same as confounding it 
with heaven. It serves to make the kingdom 
intangible, and, therefore, to many minds, 
unreal. As the result of this view the church 
ignores the physical; and to the multitude it 
does not seem concerned with real life; hence 
their estrangement from it. The social as- 

63 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

pects of Christianity are lost sight of. The 
church has no mission to society. A repre- 
sentative of this view writes me, "We have 
but one errand in this dispensation — that is 
to do as the apostles did — ^preach the gospel of 
eternal life to individuals. ... I keep at the 
only work I am commissioned to do, 'getting 
the jewels out of the mud-puddle,' not trying 
to clean up the mud-puddle'' ; which is an 
extremely happy illustration of the folly of 
such a course. There is many a miry slough 
in the world where countless precious jewels 
have been lost forever, which would have been 
drained and converted into good productive 
soil for the benefit of humanity, if the church 
had only understood the true doctrine of the 
kingdom, and had recognized her social mis- 
sion. As the kingdom was understood to be 
something wholly spiritual, physical evils were 
not seen to stand in the way of its consum- 
mation. The numerous "mud-puddles" have, 
therefore, been allowed to stand. They were 

64 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

seen to be evils, but evils that had "come to 
stay," on which, therefore, the church should 
waste no time, all of which should be devoted 
to getting individual souls into the kingdom, 
which is as invisible as its synonym, the invis- 
ible church. 

Each of the errors above referred to, like all 
long-lived and influential errors, is a half 
truth; and a half truth is usually much more 
dangerous than a whole lie, because it is so 
much more plausible and more tenacious of 
life. A lie that is unadulterated is soon found 
out by people who love the truth, but a half 
truth may be hugged by an honest man, who 
sees the honest half of it, and defended to the 
extreme of fanaticism. 

It is a mischievous error so to identify the 
kingdom of God with heaven, or with the 
visible church, or with the invisible church, 
as to make it coextensive with any one of 
them, for it is more comprehensive than all of 
them. To narrow the extent of the kingdom 

65 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

is to narrow the teaching of Jesus, to narrow 
the meaning of Christianity, and to narrow 
the mission of the church. 

It is notable that both Jesus and John the 
Baptist began preaching the kingdom without 
any definition of it, and for the obvious reason 
that the ^'kingdom of God" was an expression 
quite famiHar to their hearers. Jesus had 
much instruction to give concerning the king- 
dom, but he began with the current conception 
of it and without correcting it. 

Truths always mean more to the teacher 
than to the scholar. No teacher can teach all 
he knows. But there can be no communica- 
tion of truth whatever unless teacher and 
scholar have some ideas in common. If the 
subject under discussion means to the teacher 
one thing and to the hearer quite another and 
wholly foreign, there can be no instruction. 
Not until the learner has got hold of the 
teacher's idea, at least in part, can instruction 
enlarge and correct and perfect the conception. 

66 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

If, then, the conception of the kingdom of 
God, which was common among the IsraeHtes 
when Jesus began to teach, had been wholly- 
foreign to his own, his declaration that the 
kingdom of heaven was at hand would have 
been either quite misleading or quite mean- 
ingless; he could have given no instruction 
without defining what he meant by the king- 
dom. He, however, assumed from the first 
that the expression was understood. What^ 
then, was the common understanding of it? 

Israel was founded as a theocracy. Moses, 
the founder of the nation, was only the repre- 
sentative of Jehovah, who was king. For 
hundreds of years the nation was governed 
by judges; their king was their God. Dis- 
trustful of the sons of Samuel, the people 
clamored for a king like all the nations; and 
the Lord said to Samuel, ^'They have not 
rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that 
I should not reign over them" (I. Sam. viii. 7). 

The arms of David subjugated neighboring 
(^7 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

kings, and he established what was for that 
age a pow^erful empire (II. Sam. viii. ; I. Kings 
iv. 21-24). 

The idea of world dominion — an idea which 
all of the great nations of antiquity sought 
to realize — dawned on the mind of Israel; 
and the Davidic empire — extending in the 
national vision until at length it embraced all 
peoples, ruled from Mount Zion by one of 
David's royal line — became the national con- 
ception of Jehovah's kingdom or the kingdom 
of God. 

No one can tmderstand the prophets and 
their messages who does not bear in mind that 
the kingdom of God was the continuous thread 
of thought running through the centuries, on 
which the pearls of prophecy were strung. 
The prophets were the spokesmen of Jehovah, 
instructing the nation concerning the charac- 
ter and government of their invisible King, 
denouncing their sins as rebellion against him, 
daring even to rebuke the king, exhorting the 

68 



i/ 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

nation to repentance and renewed loyalty, and 
promivsing blessings, temporal and spiritual, to 
the obedient. Every revival of religion was 
a revival of patriotism, a renewed loyalty to 1 
Jehovah as God and as King. 

As they gained more exalted conceptions of 
God, they gained nobler conceptions of his 
kingdom. At first it was little more than a 
political ideal, but in the progress of two and 
a half centuries, through the teachings of suc- 
cessive prophets, there came the conception of 
justice (Amos), of mercy (Hosea), of for- 
giveness (Micah), of faith and redemption 
(Isaiah), of personal relations to God and 
individual religion (Jeremiah), and of regen- 
eration (Ezekiel). It should be observed, 
however, that in the prophetic vision of the 
coming kingdom of God, spiritual blessings 
were not substituted for material good, but 
superadded; there were to be universal right- 
eousness, and knowledge of God, and joy in 
him, and an irradiation of divine glory, but 

69 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

these were to be accompanied by peace among 
the nations, the increase of population, health, 
long life, and boundless plenty. 

Thus it appears that the matured prophetic 
conception of the kingdom of God, fully come 
in the earth, was that of a world-wide society, 
in which universal obedience to- the divine law, 
administered by the Lord's anointed, would 
bring universal blessings, spiritual and tem- 
poral; or, in one word, the kingdom of God 
realized would be an ideal zvorld. 

When the age of prophecy passed, the con- 
ception became less spiritual. It was still that 
of an ideal world, but of course the nation's 
ideal degenerated with the nation; and at the 
beginning of the Christian Era the overthrow 
of Israel's enemies and the establishment of 
his worldly power was the most important 
part of the future kingdom. 

Now Jesus declared that this ideal world, 
the kingdom of God, was at hand, its realiza- 
tion was begun. He knew full well the 

70 I 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

popular conception of the kingdom, and, 
knowing it, he said in his ''inaugural address" : 
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law 
or the prophets: I am not come to destroy 
but to fulfil" (Matt. V. 17). If this means 
anything, it means that Christ had come to 
make actual the prophets' vision of the king- 
dom of God. His ideal w^as far nobler than 
that of his hearers, and it was to be realized 
by means very different from what they 
expected, but the kingdom of God which he 
preached and commissioned his disciples to 
preach was the ideal world, the perfected 
world-society, the social ideal, which the na- 
tional prophets had heralded for centuries and 
had foretold that the Messiah would inaugu- 
rate. 

If a Christian and a Mohammedan discuss 
together the subject of heaven, each under- 
stands by it the eternal home of the blessed 
dead, though their conceptions of perfect 
blessedness differ radically. But notwith- 

71 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

standing the difference in their ideals, each 
means by ^'heaven" the ideal life of the other 
world. In like manner Jesus talked with the 
Jews concerning the kingdom of God. Their 
ideals of that kingdom differed widely, but 
each meant by the expression an ideal world — 
this zvorld perfected. To the Jew of that 
generation this world would not be ideal unless 
he had his foot on the neck of his enemy; to 
Jesus it would not be ideal unless man loved 
God supremely and his neighbor as himself. 

From David to Christ no Israelite thought 
of the kingdom of God as beyond the clouds. 
Such an idea would have been utterly foreign 
to the national conception. We know that 
the Jews located the kingdom in the world. 
Nor are we left to inference as to the teaching 
of Jesus on this point. When his disciples 
asked him to explain the parable of the tares, 
he told them that the field in which tares had 
been sown was the zvorld (Matt. xiii. 38). 
At the harvest these tares would be gathered 

72 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

out of his kingdom (Matt. xiii. 40, 41). This 
definitely and expHcitly locates the kingdom 
in the world. 

But it is objected that Jesus said, ''My 
kingdom is not of this world" (Jno. xviii. 36). 
The word 'Svorld'' is used in different senses 
in the New Testament. John writes : ''Love 
not the world. ... If any man love the world, 
the love of the Father is not in him'' (I. Jno. 
ii. 15). He also writes: "God so loved the 
world" (Jno. iii. 16). The more we love the 
"world" referred to in the former passage, 
the more we shall be unlike God; the more 
we love the "world" referred to in the latter, 
the more shall we be like Him, who so loved 
it that he gave his only begotten Son for its 
redemption. In the latter sense, the word 
means the earth and its inhabitants, "The 
world and they that dwell therein." In the 
former, it means the kingdom of evil, of which 
Satan is the prince (Jno. xii. 31; Matt. xii. 
26), with which the kingdom of Christ is in 

73 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

deadly conflict, and which it will ultimately 
overcome (Rev. xi. 15). It was this world 
— the kingdom of evil, whose members resort 
to violence — to which Christ referred when 
he said : ''If my kingdom were of this world, 
then would my servants fight" (Jno. xviii. 36). 

But definitely locating the kingdom of God 
in the earth does not exclude heaven from it. 
That would seem to be included by the words 
in which Christ declares that his hearers 
would see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and all 
the prophets in the kingdom of God, and them- 
selves thrust out (Luke xiii. 28). 

It now becomes necessary to distinguish 
between the extent of the kingdom and its 
content, which will be done in the following 
chapter. 



74 



IV 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD— (Continued) 

ITS EXTENT AND ITS CONTENT 

There has been much vagueness and con- 
fusion of thought because of faikire to dis- 
tinguish between the extent of the kingdom 
and its content. In the broadest sense, its 
extent is as wide as the whole universe of 
God, but for us it practically includes simply 
the earth and heaven; while in content the 
kingdom includes only those who have come 
into harmony with the will of God. When, 
in the Franco-Prussian war, the German sol- 
diers were laying siege to Paris, they were 
included in the French empire geographically, 

75 i 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

but they did not belong to it. In like manner, 
the kingdom of God includes the whole world 
in extent, but in its content it embraces only 
those who have surrendered themselves to its 
laws. Thus it is primarily a spiritual king- 
dom into w^hich men enter by a spiritual birth 
(Jno. iii. 3), but at the same time it has its 
physical aspects which, as we shall see, are 
profoundly important. We speak of the 
world of thought. In extent, it includes every 
material thing on w^hich thought has been 
expended. At a great exposition of industry 
and art, you shall not find an article which 
does not show more or less evidence of 
thought. On some great painting or statue 
years of study have been spent, but neither 
canvas nor marble can enter or ''inherit" the 
world of thought. Thus the kingdom of God 
is a kingdom of law, as wide in extent as the 
reign of law, and, therefore, including the 
physical world as well as the spiritual. But 
it is also, and primarily, a kingdom of glad 

76 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

obedience to law, and, therefore, one of 
''righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost" (Rom. xiv. 17) — a kingdom which 
"flesh and blood cannot inherit'' (I. Cor. xv. 
50) any more than a stone can enter or 
"inherit" the world of thought. 

It is accordingly made clear that heaven 
and earth (all nature) and the church, visible 
and invisible, are all included in the extent 
of the kingdom, while its content embraces 
heaven, the invisible church, and only such 
members of the visible church as have been 
regenerated. Many enter the visible church 
without any experience of the new birth, but 
no one can enter the kingdom of God without 
being "born from above" (Jno. iii. 3). But 
the content of the kingdom of God is more 
than its membership. It is a heavenly ideal; 
as Bruce says : "The kingdom of God, in one 
view of it, is an ideal hovering in heavenly 
purity above all earthly realities" — an ideal 
craving embodiment; and the kingdom comes 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

in the earth just so far and fast as this ideal 
is actualized. 

Many writers have recognized the fact that 
while the kingdom is spiritual, there is a sense 
in which it is physical; but no one, so far as 
I know, has made the distinction clear or has 
shown the importance of the physical; and 
generally the physical aspects of the kingdom 
are quite ignored. 

Olshausen says that the kingdom of God, 
conceived in the widest sense, is both '^out- 
ward and inward." Van Oosterzee says that 
it "embraces heaven and earth." President 
Bascom calls it **the synthesis of the universe 
of God, physical and spiritual." Westcott 
tells us that **The kingdom of God is at once 
spiritual and historical; eternal and temporal; 
outward and inward; visible and invisible; a 
system and an energy," and Prof. Peabody 
says : "We are brought, then, to the apparently 
paradoxical conclusion that the kingdom of 
God had to Jesus both significations, that of a 

78 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

future and that of a present state, that of a 
heavenly and that of an earthly society." 

In the above distinctions, all characteristics 
or elements of the kingdom which are de- 
scribed as "outward," ''visible," "the earth," 
"the physical universe," are included in its 
extent though not in its content; and it is the 
outward and visible aspect, the physical ele- 
ment, which I desire to emphasize, not because 
they are the most important, for they are the 
least important, but because they are the 
most neglected. 

We have already seen that by the expression, 
"kingdom of God," Jesus meant and his 
hearers understood an ideal zvorld. The spir- 
itual element in the ideal of the latter was 
insignificant, if indeed it had any existence; 
but in the ideal of Jesus it was the supreme 
element; and because he so emphasized it, 
many have lost sight of the physical altogether, 
and have spiritualized all his teachings; as if 
"deliverance to the captives" and "liberty to 

79 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

them that are bruised'^ meant the spiritual 
emancipation of those who are bound and 
bruised by sin, and as if "recovering of sight 
to the Mind" meant the opening of blind 
spiritual eyes. 

The physical sustains much the same rela- 
tion to the spiritual in the kingdom of God 
that it does in m,an. The spiritual is incom- 
parably the more important, but when you 
get rid of the physical, all that is left is 
ghostly and has little to do with this world. 

Jesus made no such mistake. He knew 
that there could not be an ideal w^orld without 
the removal of physical evil; hence his con- 
stant concern for the blind, the lame, the sick, 
the hungry. When we are told that he went 
about all Galilee preaching the gospel of the 
kingdom, it is added, "and healing all man- 
ner of sickness and all manner of disease" 
(Matt. iv. 23). When he commissioned the 
twelve disciples to preach the gospel of the 
kingdom, he added, "Heal the sick, cleanse 

80 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

the lepers, raise the dead" (Matt. x. 8). 
When John the Baptist doubted whether 
Jesus were indeed the Anointed of God, 
come to inaugurate the kingdom, Jesus said 
to the messengers, "Go and show John those 
things which ye do hear and see'' (Matt, 
xi. 4). There was visible concrete evidence 
of the coming of the kingdom. ''The blind 
receive their sight, and the lame walk, the 
lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead 
are raised up, and the poor have the gospel 
preached to them" (Matt. xi. 5). All this 
was literal, not figurative. Jesus had compas- 
sion on the multitude, not only when he saw 
that they were "as sheep having no shepherd" 
(Matt. ix. 36), but also when he saw that 
they had "nothing to eat" (Matt. xv. 32). 
When, after Jesus had risen from the dead, 
he saw his disciples at the sea of Galilee, he 
spoke of love and of feeding his lambs and 
sheep, but it is significant that his very first 
word was, "Children, have ye any meat?" 

81 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

(Jno. xxi. 5). Probably some interpreters 
would say that he meant spiritual food, but 
for the fact that he provided a substantial 
breakfast for the hungry fishermen, who found 
it waiting for them when they got ashore. 

Jesus ever insists on the spiritual — the 
transformed character — not because it is neces- 
sary to win heaven, but because it is necessary 
in order to win the world; his eye is fixed on 
the earth, not on the skies. Men must become 
meek, not because the meek alone enter heaven, 
but because they "inherit the earth" (Matt. 
V. 5). His followers are become "light," not 
that they may gain a heaven of light, but 
that they may enlighten the world (Matt. v. 
14). They have become "salt," not that they 
may find a place among the saved, but 
that they may salt and save the earth (Matt. 

V. 13). 

Jesus taught the reality of heaven, and the 
certainty and blessedness of its rewards, but 
heaven occupied little space in his teachings. 

82 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

They dealt chiefly with this world and with 
life here in this world. He evidently believed 
that the best way to fit men for heaven was 
to bring heaven down to earth and to get men 
acclimated to it right here. 

The common conception of religion which 
fixes attention on heaven as the great desid- 
eratum, which makes this life simply a proba- 
tion, and the "salvation of the soul" its great 
business, is entirely foreign to the teaching of 
Jesus. And this misconception is due to 
having forgotten or misconceived the kingdom 
of God, to having lost sight of the fact that 
the great burden of Christ's preaching was 
an ideal world. 

When we pray, *Thy kingdom come," we 
immediately add, 'Thy will be done in earth 
as it is in heaven" (Matt. vi. lo). This latter 
petition I understand to be Christ's interpre- 
tation of the former. A little later in the 
same discourse he added : "Not every one that 
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into 

83 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the 
will of my Father" (Matt. vii. 21). He 
enters into the kingdom, or the kingdom enters 
into him (which is the same thing), who does 
God's wull. It follows, then, that the king- 
dom comes here in the earth just so fast as 
God's will is done in earth as it is in heaven; 
that is, perfectly. 

To teach us a prayer which is never to be 
answered, and which it is impossible to answer, 
would be to mock us cruelly. We are, then, 
warranted in believing that the earth is to be 
brought into as complete subjection to the will 
of God as is heaven itself. This is a prophetic 
prayer, which will certainly receive its ful- 
filling answer; and that will certainly make 
an ideal world, w^hich will be the kingdom 
fully come. 

Now how much is implied by perfect 
obedience to the will of God? Law is an 
expression of the will of the governing power. 
God's will is embodied in his laws. When 

84 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

that will is done in earth as it is in heaven, 
then God's laws will be perfectly obeyed in 
all the earth. But is God's will expressed 
only in the moral law? What of the laws of 
nature? Are they not God's laws? If not 
his laws, whose are they? If the laws of the 
spiritual world are God's laws, why not those 
of the physical world? 

No believer will deny that the mineral, 
vegetable and animal kingdoms are God's ; and 
if his kingdoms, why not his kingdom ? They 
are not unrelated and foreign to each other. 
They are built one on another; are parts of 
one plan, and, together with the spiritual, 
constitute one great whole. Wherever God's 
laws obtain, there God reigns; and wherever 
God reigns, there is his kingdom. "His king- 
dom ruleth over all" (Ps. ciii. 119). 

It is not pretended that the expression 
kingdom of God was used in this broad sense 
in the time of Christ, or that obedience to the 
will of God was then understood to include 

85 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

obedience to natural laws. There was of 
course no knowledge of natural laws in that 
age of the world; our conception of nature 
was utterly foreign to that generation. But 
if, by the prophets of science, God has made 
a revelation to us which sheds new light on 
his relations to the world, and if that new 
light enriches Scriptural expressions, shall we 
reject the larger meaning because it was 
unknown to the men of Bible times? 

The Psalmist said, 'The Lord God is a sun'' 
(Ps. Ixxxiv. ii). But how insignificant was 
his knowledge of the sun compared with 
ours? He knew that it gave heat and light, 
and that was all he knew. He did not know 
of its attracting power; he had never con- 
ceived of its magnitude, and did not dream 
that it was the center of a vast system of 
circling worlds. He did not know that it 
lifted the clouds into the sky and painted them 
with the glory of the morning and evening, 
or that it gave to the cataract its beauty and 

86 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

power. Science has enriched this Scriptural 
metaphor for us a thousand-fold. Shall we 
reject this added meaning because it was un- 
known to the Psalmist? 

David said: *The earth is the Lord's, and 
the fulness thereof; the world, and they that 
dwell therein" (Ps. xxiv. i). But how large 
was David's world? It could hardly have 
been as large as that of Herodotus, who lived 
some five hundred years later. He resolved 
when a young man to write the history of 
the nations, and to visit them before writing. 
He acquainted himself with the islands and 
coasts of Asia Minor ; he visited Egypt, Pales- 
tine and Phoenicia, and penetrated as far east 
as Babylon and Susa; he also coasted along 
the shores of the Black Sea, and came to the 
conclusion that the earth was an island with 
a diameter of about fifteen hundred miles 
from east to west. Are we to infer that only 
that little world which David knew belongs 
to the Lord, or has the meaning of his declara- 

S7 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

tion enlarged with man's enlarging knowledge 
of the earth? 

The Master's parting charge to his dis- 
ciples was, *'Go ye into all the world and 
preach the gospel" (Mark xvi. 15). ''All the 
world" in that day meant the western fringe 
of Asia, the northern fringe of Africa and 
the southern fringe of Europe. Those regions 
measured the obligations of the disciples who 
received the charge ; but do they measure ours ? 
In like manner, whole continents of meaning 
have been added to the prayer, "Thy will be 
done." We now recognize all natural laws 
as expressions of the divine will, whether in 
the physical, intellectual or spiritual world, 
so that the words, ''Thy will be done in earth 
as it is in heaven," mean to us perfect obe- 
dience to all the laws of bodv, mind and 
spirit, resulting in a perfected manhood — a 
body, worthy to be the temple of the indwelling 
God, more beautiful than any sanctuary ever 
reared by hands ; a mind, transparent to truth, 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

and like the diamond radiant in its light; a 
heart so pure that its unsullied consciousness 
reflects the face of God. They mean perfect 
obedience to all the laws of the social organism, 
and, hence, the perfecting of society, the sanc- 
tifying of all human relationships and institu- 
tions — a civilization whose life is righteousness 
and whose law is love. These words mean 
the paradox of nature's laws obeyed and, 
therefore, nature conquered — no more sickness, 
no more want, but the paradise of plenty, 
health and peace, foretold by the ancient 
prophets of Israel. They mean the New 
Jerusalem, come down ^'from God, out of 
heaven'' — heaven itself, but heaven on earth; 
not men dwelling with God in a heaven above, 
but God dwelling with men in a heaven below 
(Rev. xxi. 3, 4). They mean the kingdom 
fully come, the ideal world of Jesus actualized. 
F. Herbert Stead has pointed out that the 
words, "The kingdom of God," both in the 
Aramaic, which Jesus spoke, and in the Greek 

89 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

of the New Testament, mean literally "the 
Royal Rule of God." And this Royal Rule, 
as it is realized in the responsive attitude of 
its subjects, he thus happily describes : "A 
fellowship of Christ-like love which is to 
include every soul that is willing to enter! 
A community which embraces every other true 
community of men, w^hich contains and con- 
trols the home, the state, the economic system, 
the fellowships of science, letters, art. A holy 
society already in the midst of men, already 
shedding its brightness over human life, yet 
shining more and more unto the perfect day; 
a kingdom progressively realized on earth, 
perfectly fulfilled in heaven. A girdle of love 
destined to clasp into unity the whole of man- 
kind, whatever the race, the color, the cultUFe, 
and to bind all to the throne and heart of the 
Universal Father ! 

"Is not the arrival of such a society a glo- 
rious piece of intelligence? Is it not indeed 
good tidings of great joy? Among all the 

90 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

dreams of social perfectness which the fertile 
mind of man has flung forth, you will not find 
one to equal this of the kingdom of God; its 
breadth, its height, its completeness. And it 
is no mere dream; it is a fact in process of 
growing fulfilment. Gladdest of all glad tid- 
ings, it is open to all!"® 

" "The Kingdom of God.'' Second Part, p. 70. 



91 



V 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD— (Continued) 

COROLLARIES OF THE TRUE DOCTRINE 

Consider now some inferences and results 
which naturally follow the true doctrine of the 
kingdom of God. 

I. That kingdom is the synthesis of the 
spiritual and the physical; and the correlation 
of the two composes many an ancient quarrel. 

Truth is a sphere; and though it has oppo- 
site poles, it is still one. But men can see only 
a hemisphere at a time; hence the many and 
long-lived disputes over half truths. One sees 
only the ideal; another, only the real. One 
fixes attention on the inward ; another, on the 

92 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

outward. One would save the soul; another 
strives for the body. One says, Change the 
man's inner life, and he will change his sur- 
roundings; another says. Transform environ- 
ment and you will transform character. And 
while they bring railing accusations against 
each other, the world waits and suffers. 

Both parties to the unending dispute are 
right and both are wrong. Each is right in 
the half truth which he accepts, and each is 
wrong in the half truth which he rejects. 
Why not put the two hemispheres together, 
and let the world roll on? This is precisely 
what the true doctrine of the kingdom does. 
In it the spiritual and physical, the ideal and 
the real, the inward and the outward, the soul 
and the body, are not set over against one 
another as if unrelated and even antagonistic. 
They are seen to be parts of one whole, won- 
derfully interrelated, and each profoundly in- 
fluencing the other. ^ 

One of the most serious mistakes of the 
93 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

church has been to ignore the physical — a mis- 
take she would never have made if she had fol- 
lowed the example of her Master. Devoting 
herself exclusively to the spiritual, she is like a 
mother who in her anxiety to save her child's 
soul neglects his food, clothing, exercise and 
cleanliness, with the result that there is not left 
much of a soul to save. 

The rapid growth of "Christian Science," 
so-called, is a reaction from a Christianity 
which ignores the physical, and, therefore, does 
not recognize the interrelation of soul and 
body ; precisely as Unitarianism was a reaction 
from an orthodoxy which practically ignored 
the humanity of our Lord; and reactions are 
naturally one-sided and extreme. The remedy 
for them is to preach the well-rounded truth. 
We are slowly learning, by costly experience, 
that no great Scriptural truth can be safely 
neglected; sooner or later it appears in cari- 
cature. 

In our work for the coming of the kingdom 
94 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

in the world, we should give to the physical 
the same place in our thoughts, our plans, our 
methods, which it has in the thoughts, plans 
and methods of God. Let us recognize its 
value as precisely what it is. It is mischievous 
either to overestimate or to underestimate its 
importance. To make the physical supreme 
is to accept the "philosophy of dirt,'' and to 
plunge into the mire of materialism ; while, on 
the other hand, to ignore it is to attempt to 
build a superstructure without a foundation. 

We do not yet appreciate to how great ex- 
tent physical conditions control moral progress. 
If we wish to determine effects, we must com- 
mand causes ; and science has shown that many 
phenomena in the spiritual world spring from 
causes in the physical. The harvest is seen' 
waving in the air and the sunlight, but its 
roots are down in the ground. 

A friend of mine, an Episcopal rector, de- 
cided a few years ago to make a study of 
tenement-house conditions at first hand. In 

95 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

midsummer he took quarters in "Hell's 
Kitchen/' one of the worst tenements in New 
York. He awoke from his first night's sleep 
with a severe headache. The second morning 
found him with a sore throat. Fearing he 
was about to be sick, he went into the country, 
where a few days of pure air restored him to 
a normal condition. He returned to the tene- 
ment with a repetition of his former experi- 
ence, except that the effect of the poisonous 
air became gradually less obvious as the sys- 
tem accommodated itself to it. Half a dozen 
times, during the summer, he went back and 
forth between city and country, and each time 
with a like result ; thus demonstrating that the 
headache and sore throat were caused by the 
foul air of the tenement. He observed that 
each morning he awoke in "Hell's Kitchen ' 
every nerve in his body was crying out for 
some stimulant ; and he said it required all the 
self-control he possessed not to go into a saloon 
and call for a glass of whisky. 

96 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

Now the ordinary dwellers in that tenement 
have not the established habits, the strong con- 
victions and the trained will of my friend; 
and the result is that they probably take the 
glass of whisky. Moral suasion is impotent 
with bad ventilation. 

The following incident was received from 
the late Charles Dudley Warner, who had made 
a special study of prisons and prison discipline. 
At the Elmira Reformatory, some years ago, 
the physician in charge asked to have a num- 
ber of the worst incorrigibles turned over to 
him. Eleven of the toughest cases were se- 
lected; they were young fellows who would 
neither work nor study, and who resisted all 
persuasion, whether moral or corporal. The 
physician first gave them Turkish baths. Per- 
haps he thought he could sweat out of them 
some of the "original sin." Then he made a 
careful study of their food, and fed them 
scientifically, meanwhile giving to them sys- 
tematic physical training. In a few weeks' 

97 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

time nine out of the eleven had voluntarily 
sought admission to some class for intellectual 
improvement. The higher nature had been 
reached through the lower. 

What if the specialist in diseases of the eye 
or lungs or heart knew nothing of general 
anatomy? The man who knows only one 
organ of the human body knows none at all. 
Now, body, soul and spirit do not live apart, 
iminfluenced by each other, any more than the 
separate organs of the animal organism live 
separate and independent lives. Modern sci- 
ence has demonstrated that the physical, intel- 
lectual and moral elements in man are most 
intimately related. It is practically impos- 
sible to elevate one of these elements while the 
others remain degraded. 

Precisely here do we discover the radical 
defect of former philanthropic, religious and 
educational methods. They have generally 
been addressed to only one element in man; 
hence very limited success. To disregard an 

98 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

important factor in any problem is to invite 
failure. To leave out of the account a large 
fraction of the man is unscientific. 

For the social settlement to neglect the spir- 
itual is even a greater blunder than for the 
church to neglect the physical. There is a 
common impression that unless social settle- 
ments are non-religious they will estrange 
Jews and Roman Catholics. This has been 
demonstrated to be a mistake. When settle- 
ment workers make no use of religion, they 
neglect the longest lever for the uplifting of 
the people. 

What if Christ's Apostles had reasoned as 
do many modern Christians ? "We know that 
the cross and the Crucified are to the Jews a 
stumbling-block and to the Gentiles foolish- 
ness. We will, therefore, say nothing of 
either. We will live Christian lives before all, 
we will show a Christian spirit, we will do all 
the good we can in every way, but we will not 
preach Christ and him crucified lest we alienate 

L.oFC. 99 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

the very ones we wish to help." Such surrep- 
titious Christianity could never have produced 
a Christian civiHzation. When those who are 
trying to uplift humanity have gained the true 
conception of the kingdom, they will neglect 
neither the spiritual nor the physical ; and they 
will find that the latter, correctly understood 
and wisely used, becomes a means for reaching 
and influencing the former. A correct under- 
standing of the kingdom of God, therefore, 
serves to counteract the existing tendency to 
materialism. 

2. Again, the true doctrine of the kingdom 
points out the relations of God to natural law. 

When the world was young, natural laws 
were of course unknown. iVll nature was 
instinct with divine life; her movements were 
the activities of the gods, whose caprices ac- 
counted for whatever was unexpected. The 
Israelite ascribed to the will of Jehovah all the 
processes of nature. The Old Testament is 
full of this conception, and it is unmistakable 

100 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

in the New. God makes his sun to rise ( Matt. 
V. 45). He sends his rain (Matt. v. 45). He 
feeds the fowls (Matt. vi. 26). He clothes 
the grass (Matt. vi. 30). This was the first 
stage, marked by the simple faith of childhood. 

A second began with the discovery of nat- 
ural law; and wherever law could be traced a 
personal will was no longer seen; only the ex- 
traordinary, for which science was as yet 
unable to account, was referred to the divine 
will; and at length, when the reign of law 
was seen to be universal, many quite excluded 
God from his universe. But we are now enter- 
ing on a third stage, in which men are begin- 
ning to see that natural law is not a substitute 
for the divine will, but an expression of it. 
Will without law and law without will are 
equally false and equally true. Each contains 
a half truth, and the two together make up the 
rounded whole of will through lazv. 

In the first stage there was the confidence of 
untried faith; in the second, the triumph of 

lOI 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

unbelief over an unintelligent faith; in the 
third, the triumph of intelligent faith over 
unbelief. 

Our faith in God is not faith in an almighty 
magician or in an omnipotent fairy. We do 
not conceive of him as breaking into the course 
of nature or as setting it aside. Nor do we 
think of him as sitting apart from the universe 
and watching it as he might watch an infinite 
clock, which he had wound up and left to run 
down. God is immanent in nature and active 
in human affairs, purposing, guiding, over- 
ruling, accomplishing. Nature's laws are not 
obstacles to him, but rather instruments. Are 
we to imagine that he is less the master of 
these laws than is man? Prof. Tyndall used , 
to pour mercury into a red-hot crucible, and j 
in a few minutes from that crucible, still red- ( 
hot, he would empty the mercury a frozen 
lump. He accomplished this result, not by 
violating nature's laws nor by setting them j 
aside, but by an intimate knowledge and skillful 

102 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

use of them. The course of nature is not fixed 
to the limited intelligence of man; why should 
it be fixed to the infinite intelligence of God? 
We boast that nature's forces have become our 
servants, which run to and fro in the earth to 
do our bidding; and are we to suppose that 
God is the helpless slave of our servants? 
Then is man mightier than the Almighty! 

A misconception of the kingdom usually 
involves a misconception of the world. Those 
who fail to recognize the physical aspects of 
the kingdom are very apt to suppose that 
nature, if it does not belong to the kingdom 
of God, is a part of the kingdom of this world, 
and somehow antagonistic to God. Nature 
seems to come between him and us, and to hide 
him from us. But when we learn that the 
kingdom includes the physical as well as the 
spiritual, and that they are so intimately 
related that each influences the other, we see 
that he can control either only as he controls 
both, and that his laws embrace the one as 

103 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

well as the other ; that he is God of the whole 
universe, and not of a fraction of it. 

Thus nature becomes the drapery which 
hides and yet reveals the Infinite One. We see 
that her processes are his methods; her har- 
monies, his reason ; her beauties, his thoughts ; 
her wonders, his wisdom; her forces, his 
power; her laws, his will. 

This view recognizes God in history; it 
makes room for divine providence in all the 
incidents of daily life; it affords a reasonable 
basis for prayer and confirms our faith in it. 
In short, it makes God real and brings him 
near, w^hich is precisely what we all need. The 
life which has no consciousness of the present 
God and Father is orphaned, and beggarly 
poor and blind; is lived within reach of 
strength which it never appropriates; is lived 
in the very presence of peace and comfort and 
blessedness, which it never knows; is im- 
mersed in a divine glory, which it never sees. 

Science by discovering the laws of nature 
104 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

reveals the divine methods, and enables us, by 
adopting them, to become efficient laborers to- 
gether with God unto the kingdom, and to have 
the inspiration of that blessed consciousness. 

3. Another inference from the true doctrine 
of the kingdom is the sacredness of the so- 
called secular. The old and false and lament- 
able, distinction between the ''sacred" and the 
"secular" is based on the supposition that there 
is a line of cleavage running through life which 
divides it into that which relates to God, the 
eternal life, the soul and religion on the one 
hand, and on the other, that which relates to 
the world, the present life, the body and the 
temporal. The former are "sacred," the latter 
are "secular" ; and between the two groups 
there is supposed to be a natural antagonism. 
Thus there is enmity between God and the 
world, and conflicting interests between the 
life to come and this life, between soul and 
body, between things religious and things 
temporal. 

105 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

This pernicious misconception of God, of 
life, and of religion is possible only in con- 
nection with a radically wrong conception of 
the kingdom of God. When we see that Jesus 
came and lived and died that God's will might 
be perfectly done in the earth ; that is, that this 
might be an ideal world, when we see that 
this life is to be perfected like the other, that 
soul and body are mutually dependent, that 
the spiritual and the physical alike belong to 
the kingdom of God, that the temporal may be 
and ought to be religious, that every act, 
whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, 
should be done to the glory of God, then we 
see that there is no room for the so-called 
"secular," and that whatever cannot be done 
to God's glory and the upbuilding of the king- 
dom is forbidden and unholy. 

"There are no gentile oaks, no pagan pines; 
The grass beneath our feet is Christian grass." 

4. Again, the true doctrine of the kingdom 
106 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

of God makes obvious the true mission of the 
church. 

The church is the body of which Christ is 
the head. The body and its members are 
instruments of the head, and are intended to 
execute its purposes. The church was organ- 
ized to carry on the work which Christ began. 
If her great object in the world is different 
from his, then she is disloyal to her Master. 
If the great object of his endeavor was the 
kingdom of God, then the church must be but 
a means to the kingdom as an end. An 
erroneous conception of the kingdom leads to 
an erroneous conception of the church, and a 
narrow conception of the kingdom results in 
a narrow conception of the mission of the 
church. 

If the kingdom were synonymous with 
heaven, then would it be the mission of the 
church to get individual souls safely trans- 
ported from earth to heaven. If it were ex- 
clusively spiritual, sustaining no relation to the 

107 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

physical except that of antagonism, then would 
the church rightly devote herself exclusively 
to the saving of souls. If the kingdom were 
identical with the visible church, then would 
the church properly devote herself to her own 
upbuilding. This represents the actual con- 
ception and practice of most churches. Indeed, 
for many generations the kingdom has been 
lost sight of and the church has taken its place. 
The pulpit has had as little to say of the king- 
dom as Jesus had to say of the church, and 
it has had as much to say of the church as 
Jesus had to say of the kingdom. 

When it is generally understood that the 
kingdom and the church are not the same, 
and that the latter is only a means to the 
former as an end; and when it is generally 
seen that the kingdom is this world idealized, 
and that the kingdom comes just so fast as 
Christ's ideal for the world is actualized, then 
the church will change her aims and adapt 
her methods accordingly ; she will seek to save 

io8 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

men rather than souls, and she will endeavor 
to discharge her mission to society as well as 
to the individual. She will discover that it 
is much wiser to clean up the "mud puddle" 
so that the jewels will no longer get lost than 
it is to devote all of her time to recovering a 
small proportion of the lost jewels. 

The church's narrow conception of her mis- 
sion has resulted in an unholy divorce between 
religion and morals, between Christianity and 
philanthropy. Our relations with God cannot 
be right, if our relations with our fellow men 
are wrong. Religion which is immoral is 
irreligious; and morals which are irreligious 
are immoral. The Christianity which is not 
philanthropic is as defective as the philanthropy 
which is not Christian. Now the kingdom of 
God is the synthesis of religion and morals, 
of Christianity and philanthropy. When, 
therefore, the church apprehends the true doc- 
trine of the kingdom, she will no longer put 
asunder what God has joined together. 

109 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

The very common misconception that her 
own upbuilding is the proper mission of the 
church is due to identifying the church with 
the kingdom, or to losing sight of the king- 
dom altogether; and it is chiefly responsible 
for the unseemly strifes of sectarianism. 
There are many churches; there is but one 
kingdom. As long as the churches seek each 
to upbuild herself, they will be rivals, and will 
draw apart. When they all seek to upbuild 
the kingdom of God, they will become allies, 
and will draw together. When we emphasize 
citizenship in the kingdom far more than 
membership in the church, it will be a long 
step toward Christian union. In his last mes- 
sage to the church Philip Schaff said : ''The 
reformation of the sixteenth century ended in 
division; the reformation of the twentieth 
century will end in reunion." But the new 
reformation will not be well begun until the 
church gains the true conception of the king- 
dom of God. 

no 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

5. Again, the true doctrine of the kingdom 
affords the greatest possible inspiration. 

Our best hours are a revelation of what life 
may be when the spiritual dominates, and we 
become conscious of high fellowship with the 
Highest. If we could only keep ourselves up 
to our best selves, could only make our supreme 
hours habitual, we should abide with the 
Master on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
But we may build no tabernacles there; we 
descend from the Mount and find society strug- 
gling with many demons which must be cast 
out. These are the devils of selfishness and 
meanness, of vice and crime, of besotted ignor- 
ance and low-mindedness, of injustice and 
oppression; and how many a stout heart has 
lost courage in the presence of such sin and 
woe? And how often does the sense of God 
and of his power and love grow distant and 
dim? We need abiding inspirations which 
shall make us strong and patient, and which 
like vestal virgins shall keep the sacred flame 

III 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

of faith and zeal ever burning. Such inspira- 
tions come from the true doctrine of the 
kingdom. 

It afifords the inspiration of the widest pos- 
sible outlook. Thoreau says : ''Our horizon is 
never quite at our elbows." But the horizon of 
the man in a pit is only large enough to take in 
the hole where he is. Lifting a man out of 
the pit of selfishness to the mountain-top 
whence can be seen with the eye of faith the 
kingdoms of this world become the kingdom 
of our Lord is like transferring a man from the 
bottom of a well to the top of the Matterhorn. 
He finds himself in another world, the grand- 
eur and beauty of which he had never con- 
ceived. We grow or shrivel to the measure of 
our desires and purposes. If they are centered 
in self, we become narrower as we grow older. 
As our thoughts, our desires, our aims are 
fixed on a small object, we take a narrow view 
of life. Whatever concerns us is magnified; 
all else is minimized; thus is our perspective 

112 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

vitiated and shortened; and as character is 
intensified with age, our horizon becomes ever 
more contracted. 

When, on the other hand, the kingdom of 
God becomes the first object of daily and 
hourly endeavor, the whole world comes into 
view. Our thoughts, our desires, our hopes, 
our endeavors are enlarged to include all races, 
all nations and all future generations. God's 
working plan is revealed to us; we discern 
meaning and purpose in the processes of 
nature and in the ongoing of history. We 
become interested in all that ministers to the 
progress of civilization. Whatever concerns 
humanity concerns us. All things have become 
ours, for we are heirs of the kingdom, "having 
nothing and yet possessing all things" (II. Cor. 
vi. lo). As an organized society, the king- 
dom is a whole, and every part serves every 
other part. Thus the movements of civiliza- 
tion on the other side of the globe — things 
great and small, the Suez Canal and the toil 

"3 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

of a peasant — touch us and interest us, because 
as citizens of the kingdom we have a proprie- 
tary right in the whole. 

Under the divine direction of Him, to whom 
has been given all power in heaven and earth, 
the myriad forces of society are working for 
the great consummation. The selfish plans of 
governments, the machinations of politicians, 
the schemes of competing corporations are all 
being overruled for the kingdom; the million 
are unconsciously furthering it; the mighty 
engines are harnessed for it, the looms are 
weaving for it, the mills are grinding for it; 
it is the outcome of all activity, the goal of all 
progress. 

The great laws of tUe universe meet in your 
backyard and may be studied there. The 
pebble and the grain of sand influence the sun 
and the stars. In like manner the ordinary 
and the narrow in life are widely and nobly 
related, so that the every-day round and the 
commonplace are glorified with new meanings 

114 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

and new motives when they are seen to be a 
part of an all-embracing plan, which God is 
now working out in the world. 

The true doctrine of the kingdom affords 
the inspiration of a glorious ideal and a firm 
confidence that it will surely be realized. This 
doctrine has no room for any *^necessary" or 
"permanent" evils. It bids us recognize every 
existing evil, and never doubt that each is 
doomed. The kingdom of God is Utopia 
made rational and destined to be made actual. 
It is the new social ideal perfected. It is the 
New Jerusalem, come down from God out of 
heaven and resplendent with his glory. The 
certainty of such a consummation inspires 
boundless patience and courage. On the banks 
of the Kuruman, in the density of African 
heathenism, Robert and Mary Moffat toiled on 
for ten years without a single convert. Four 
hundred miles beyond the frontier of civiliza- 
tion, alone in the midst of savages, their faith 
never faltered. At a time when there was 

115 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

''no glimmer of the dawn ' a letter was received 
from a friend in far-off England, asking if 
there was anything of use which could be sent. 
The significant answer of Mary Moffat was: 
''Send us a communion service; we shall want 
it some day." It came three years later, the 
day before the first converts were baptized. 

The confidence of those who toil for the 
coming of the kingdom cannot be put to shame 
until the love and power and wisdom of God 
have failed. 

This doctrine of the kingdom affords us the 
inspiration of the noblest fellowship. 

If our aim is the upbuilding of the kingdom 
of God, and if our motive is love, then however 
obscure our work, or however unappreciated, 
whatever our disappointments or seeming fail- 
ures, our aim and motive identify us with the 
prophets of old, with the great souls of every 
age, with Jesus, the Christ, with the Father 
himself, whose friends and co-laborers we are. 
We have with them the fellowship of the same 

ii6 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

aim — an ideal world; we have the fellowship 
of the same motive — a disinterested love; we 
have the fellowship of the same spirit — that 
of joyous service and of glad sacrifice; we 
have the fellowship of the same great hope — a 
sinless and a tearless world; and we shall for- 
ever have the fellowship of the same joy — the 
blessed fruition of the kingdom fully come. 



"7 



VI 
, THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

The rediscovery of the kingdom of God 
has been accompanied by the rediscovery of 
the social teachings of Jesus. 

Some fourteen or fifteen years ago there 
was a meeting of New York clergymen who 
were especially interested in social problems, 
and who have been leaders in the readjustment 
of Christian thought and work, which is now 
in progress. There were about a dozen pres- 
ent, and among them were men of national and 
international reputation and influence. One of 
the leaders expressed his perplexity and regret 

ii8 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

that he could not find in the teachings of Jesus 
any social laws! And what is still more sur- 
prising, the statement passed unchallenged, so 
completely had leaders of Christian thought 
lost sight of the social aspects of Christianity. 
Since then a shelf full of books has been 
written on the social teachings of Jesus. 

When civilization was individualistic, men 
went to the New Testament for light on the 
problems of the individual, and found what 
they sought. When industry ceased to be 
individualistic and became collective it wrought 
a corresponding change in civilization. With 
this social revolution came the consciousness 
of social needs and the recognition of social 
problems; and when men went to the Bible 
for light on these problems, new light broke 
forth from the Word of God. 

A social organization implies organizing 
principles, and a kingdom implies laws. 
Jesus laid hold of three fundamental social 
principles, and promulgated them as the funda- 

119 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

mental laws of the kingdom of God, viz., 
SERVICE^ SACRIFICE and love/^ 

THE LAW OF SERVICE. 

So comprehensive is this law that its span 
includes both the spiritual and the natural 
world. The obedience yielded to it by nature 
is unconscious and of course unmoral. It is 
a prophecy of a higher service which may be 
rendered or refused by conscious man. Wher- 
ever there is human association there is service 
of some sort. Roman civilization was based 
on the compulsory service of the slave. Our 
modern, industrial civilization is based on the 
compensated service of the employee. 

This principle of service, illustrated in 
nature and in human society, Jesus laid hold of. 



i<^For a fuller discussion of these laws, see my "The 
Times and Young Men," where a chapter is devoted to 
each. It is there shown that these laws belong to the 
natural as well as to the spiritual world, or that they 
are at least foreshadowed in nature; and that these 
universal laws, binding on both the spiritual and the 
physical, are doubly binding on man, in whom the spir- 
itual and the physical meet. 

120 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

ennobled, Christianized, and made one of the 
fundamental laws of the world society which 
he estabhshed. In service, as in all else that he 
required of his disciples, he himself afforded 
the supreme example. Though he thought it 
not robbery to be equal with God, he made 
himself of no reputation, and took upon him 
the form of a servant (Phil. ii. 6, 7). He 
said to his disciples : ^T am among you as he 
that serveth'' (Luke xxii. 2y^, "The Son of 
man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
minister'' (Matt. xx. 28). 'The disciple is 
not above his master, nor the servant above 
his lord'' (Matt. x. 24). ''As my Father hath 
sent me, even so send I you" (Jno. xx. 21). 
He was sent to minister; he sent forth his 
disciples to minister. And he taught that the 
final principle of judgment, to be applied to 
all nations, was that of ministration. In the 
picture which he gives of the last great court, 
men are acquitted or condemned according as 
they had served or failed to serve. 

121 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

Jesus did not look on service as a disagree- 
able necessity which all should endure alike, 
or according to the ability of each, nor did 
he teach that it was to be rendered for com- 
pensation. It was, instead, to be regarded as 
a privilege. He found servitude a badge of 
dishonor; he made it the badge of distinction. 
''Whosoever will be chief among you, let him 
be your servant" (Matt. xx. 2y^, In the king- 
dom which Jesus set up, he who ranks all others 
is not he who knows most, nor he who prays 
most, nor he who enjoys the greatest ecstasies, 
nor he who is most served, but he who serves 
most. This distinction marks the law of ser- 
vice not as incidental, but fundamental in the 
kingdom of God. 

It is important to make a clear distinction 
between commercial service and Christian ser- 
vice. In every civilized society there are a 
thousand services, an exchange of which is 
effected through the common medium of 
money, which represents them all. A funda- 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

mental law of commerce is that of demand 
and supply. Goods may be offered for sale 
which cost much time, skill and money, but 
if they are not wanted they have no com- 
mercial value. Another fundamental law of 
commerce is that of exchange — value for 
value. Markets may be glutted with the 
necessaries of life, and men may be perishing 
for lack of them, but, no matter how great 
men's need may be, if they have nothing to 
offer in exchange, business stagnates. These 
two laws of the commercial world fix atten- 
tion, not on the motive of the service, but 
on the service itself and its proposed compen- 
sation. Motive and need are of no consequence 
except as they may affect the quality of the 
service or the demand for it. The essential 
thing is the act or the article which is offered 
for exchange. 

Jesus, on the contrary, fixes attention, not 
on the act, but on the motive of the act. He 
devotes a large part of the Sermon on the 

123 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

Mount to showing that in the kingdom of 
God the essence of obedience and disobedience 
is to be found in the spirit, motive and pur- 
pose (Matt. V. 20-48, vi. 1-18). 

"He also serves who only stands and waits." 

Commercial service aims to supply a demand; 
Christian service aims to meet a need. The 
former may be selfish; the latter is unselfish. 
The usual object of commercial service is 
gain; the object of Christian service is use- 
fulness, and its natural reward is a larger 
opportunity to serve and an increased ability 
for service, together with the satisfaction of 
having served. 

When a man is working simply for his 
wages or his salary, and he loses the same, his 
loss is complete. But if he is working to 
serve and fails to get his wage, his loss, how- 
ever important it may be, is only incidental 
after all; his real object has been accomplished 
and that is his real reward. In like manner, 

124 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

if a man is working for influence or fame, and 
fails to receive the recognition to which his 
services entitle him, he suffers defeat and dis- 
appointment. But if his object is to serve, he 
may congratulate himself on his success, 
though others wear his laurels, and he remains 
unhonored and unknown. They get the shell, 
and he the kernel. Their award is external 
and may be lost any day ; while his is internal 
and eternal. 

Of course I do not mean to imply that it is 
unchristian to receive compensation for ser- 
vice; but I do mean to say that the compensa- 
tion should not be the predominant motive. 
Whether one serves for the sake of the 
kingdom or for the sake of the compensation 
makes all the difference between the Christian 
spirit and the commercial spirit. The Chris- 
tian spirit receives, but in order that it may 
give; the commercial spirit gives, but in order 
that it may receive. 

The Apostle Peter wrote : ^'As every man 
125 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

hath received the gift, even so minister the 
same one to another, as good stewards of the 
manifold grace of God" (I. Pet. iv. lo). The 
spirit of service recognizes every good gift 
that is bestowed on us by God's manifold grace, 
as coming under the law of stewardship. Our 
substance, our time, our powers, our opportuni- 
ties are all entrusted to us for service. Life 
itself is a sacred trust. It has come to us 
from out the long past with its unspeakably 
precious store, garnered from every generation 
back to the beginning of life. What this 
treasure has cost in time cannot be reckoned; 
what it has cost in suffering cannot be con- 
ceived. This treasure is all that is contained 
in the wonderful word heredity. It has not 
been slowly and painfully gathered throughout 
the ages that we might squander it on our 
pleasures. We are its trustees for future gen- 
erations, and are bound to hand on to them 
this precious legacy, not only unimpaired but 
enriched. The future of humanity depends on 

126 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

the way in which each generation fulfills this 
trust. The whole life of every disciple of 
Christ is to be spent, like that of his Master, 
in the service of the kingdom, and in hasten- 
ing its full coming in the earth. Such service 
implies self-abnegation ; hence the second great 
law of the kingdom, 

THE LAW OF SACRIFICE. 

This law is all-comprehending; it includes 
the entire man. Jesus said : '*If any man will 
come after me, let him deny himself and take 
up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke ix. 
23). It is one thing for a man to deny him- 
self, and a very different thing for a man to 
deny himself. No one wins success of any 
sort without some measure of self-denial. The 
champion of the prize-ring has denied himself 
many things ; and has sacrificed his intellectual 
and spiritual growth to his physical develop- 
ment. But this is not Christian self-sacrifice. 
Nor is the sacrifice of every natural inclination 

127 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

and the crucifixion of every noble desire in 
order to acquire wealth any more Christian. 
Again, a man may sacrifice body and soul to 
gratify his passion for knowledge or art. He 
is not so mean as the miser, nor so low as the 
prize-fighter, but his self-denial is no more 
Christian than theirs. In each case, one part 
of the man has been denied for the sake of 
another part. He has not denied himself, but 
only a fraction of himself. It is self-abnega- 
tion of which Christ is speaking. It is the 
death of self-will which he demands. This 
is made clear by the context. Whoever would 
be a follower of Christ must accept the cross. 
"That is one of the great words of the New 
Testament, but it has been belittled in common 
usage. We talk about our 'crosses,' meaning 
thereby anything that crosses our inclination. 
But the word never means anything so meager 
as that in the Bible. It never occurs there in 
the plural. It always means one thing, as the 
word 'gallows' means one thing, and that is 

128 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

deathf^^ When under Roman rule a man was 
sentenced to crucifixion he was compelled to 
bear his cross to the appointed place of death. 
To "take one's cross'' meant to start for the 
place of execution. Let him "take up his 
cross and follow me." Follow him where? 
To Golgotha, whither he bore his cross, there 
to be crucified with him. The man who 
knows nothing of Golgotha knows nothing of 
Christian discipleship. If he refuses to bear 
his cross to Calvary, he forsakes the path 
which Christ trod. If he "saves his life" by 
avoiding the cross, he loses it; it is only by 
losing his life that he finds it (Luke ix. 24). 
If he would live, he must die. It is only as 
he dies to self that he enters into the kingdom 
of God by the new birth. Only when self- 
will is surrendered is sin surrendered, for 
self-will is the very essence of sin. A man 
may give up many sins without giving up sin, 

1^ "The Times and Young Men," p. 8a. 
129 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

The former is reformation; the latter is con- 
version. Giving up sins means new habits; 
giving up sin means a new Hfe. 

It is the will which determines character. 
The will is the essential man; so that the sur- 
render of the will is the surrender of self, 
and nothing else is. A man may give his 
millions without giving himself. But 
"The gift without the giver is bare." 

There is nothing so hard for human nature 
as to preserve its integrity in dealing with 
God. We attempt to compromise. We offer 
him a part — a part of our time, a part of our 
endeavors, a part of our love, a part of our 
substance, and usually a very small part. If 
a man gives a tenth, he is considered a shining 
example of benevolence. But if God has a 
claim on one-tenth, he has precisely the same 
claim on the remaining nine-tenths. He did 
not one-tenth create us and we nine-tenths 
create ourselves. If he has any claim on us, 
he has all claim on us. 

130 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

"Next to sincerity, remember still, 

Thou must resolve upon integrity; 
God will have all thou hast; thy mind, thy will, 
Thy thoughts, thy words, thy works." ^^ 

Some people have a ''self-denial week" every 
year. They are only one fifty-second part 
right. Every week ought to be a ''self-denial 
week." Christ taught that there ought to be 
three hundred and sixty-five self-denial days 
every year. "If any man will come after me, 
let him deny himself and take up his cross 
daily and follow me" (Luke ix. 2^), He who 
follow^s Christ only one week in the year is 
not fit for the kingdom of God, for he turns 
back. The whole man is to be given to the 
service of the kingdom all the time. Nothing 
less is honest; nothing less is acceptable to 
God. He will not have any portion of a 
divided heart. In fact, when only a part is 
offered, no part is really given. When only 
a part is offered, it is offered for a considera- 
tion; and that is trading, not giving. If I 

12 George Herbert. 
131 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

give in order to get, I am not giving at all, 
I am investing. That is commercialism, not 
Christianity. Jesus does not say that he who 
loses his life with a view to gaining it shall 
save it. Not "Whosoever shall lose his life 
for" his own sake, but for ''my sake, the same 
shall save it" (Luke ix. 24). 

In sacrifice as in service, the essential thing 
is not the act but the spirit. The spirit of 
sacrifice gives all, and longs for more to fill 
the measure of the world's sore need — gives 
all of self and all of substance. The consecra- 
tion of all substance does not mean getting 
rid of all substance, any more than the con- 
secration of life means the getting rid of life. 
It means the devotion of both to the service 
of the kingdom. All claim to ownership is 
renounced. The use of time and of substance 
and of powers is now simply a question of 
administration. Thus the law of Christian 
sacrifice, like that of Christian service, leads us 
to Christian stewardship. 

132 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

It must not be supposed that insistence on 
the completeness of the sacrifice is in any 
respect arbitrary. It is in entire harmony 
with the universe of God. The oneness of 
the physical universe is perfect. There are no 
disorderly stars, no treasonable suns nor sys- 
tems; no atoms rebel against the laws of their 
nature. There is perfect obedience, perfect 
order, perfect harmony; and this is the "music 
of the spheres," which began when the morn- 
ing stars first sang together and all the sons 
of God shouted for joy. 

But in all this perfect obedience there is 
no moral beauty. Suns and systems cannot 
disobey. God, therefore, created wills. There 
can be no moral beauty without the obedience 
of wills which are free to disobey. Thus with 
the possibility of moral harmony came the 
possibility of moral discord, which is intro- 
duced by self-will. If a thousand men live 
each for himself, they have a thousand different 
ends in view, a thousand conflicting interests, 

133 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

a thousand different wills, a thousand different 
centers ; and as each life moves toward its own 
center it moves away from all the others. 
Thus selfishness is the great disintegrating 
force in the universe, and the cause of discord. 
Only when these thousand wills all have the 
same supreme object (that is, only when self- 
will has been crucified) can there be perfect 
organization around one center, and then there 
is perfect moral harmony. 

The oneness of the universe is possible 
because its parts are interrelated and inter- 
dependent. Inorganic matter gives itself to the 
organic, the mould gives itself to the vegetable, 
the vegetable to the animal, the animal to man, 
man to God, and God is ever giving himself 
to the objects of his creation. Thus the divine 
order reveals a vast endless chain of receiving 
and giving, each link receiving service and 
sacrifice that it may give service and sacrifice. 
Of course unconscious matter and unintelligent 
life can give only unconsciously, as the stars 

134 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

obey. But it is the high prerogative of con- 
scious and intelHgent man, Hke God himself, 
to offer conscious and intelHgent service and 
sacrifice. When man is thus in glad harmony 
with the laws of his own nature and of the 
universe, he receives according to his .need that 
he may give according to his ability; receives 
food that he may give strength, receives 
knowledge that he may give it forth as power. 
Every man is daily made the world's debtor 
by a thousand ministrations from his fellows 
and from the ranks of nature below him. 
And if one receives, not that he may give, 
but only that he may enjoy; if he accepts the 
thousands of vegetable and animal lives sac- 
rificed for him; if he benefits by the toil of 
his fellow men, which represents time and 
strength and life itself; if he appropriates all 
these, and, instead of transforming all into 
noble service and sacrifice for the common 
good, consumes them all on his mean little self, 
he dies a pauper, in debt to the universe. The 

135 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

streams of service and sacrifice, which emptied 
into his Hfe, were diverted from blessing the 
world, and perverted to pampering him; and, 
like rivers lost in the desert, they failed to 
fertilize his life. 

Moreover, by refusing to give, he robbed 
himself as well as the world, for, under spiritual 
laws, to keep is to lose, and to give is to 
acquire. It was those who had surrendered 
all things to whom Paul said : ''AH things are 
yours." There is a divine and miraculous 
mathematics by which subtraction adds and 
division multiplies. 

Because ''it is more blessed to give than to 
receive," the more precious the gift, the more 
blessed the giving. xAnd because self is most 
precious, the giving of self is the highest 
blessedness of which we are capable. When 
God demands surrender which is absolute and 
entire, he is not confiscating a life, "as though 
he needed anything." He would be some- 
thing less than benevolent, if he demanded 

136 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

less. He requires us to give that we may 
know the blessedness of coming into harmony 
with himself and with the laws of the universe; 
and he requires us to give all that we may 
know the highest possible blessedness. 

Again, so comprehensive is this law of sac- 
rifice that it includes not only the entire man, 
but the entire race. It knows no exceptions. 
God makes no class legislation. ''If any man 
will come after me"; that includes rich and 
poor alike; the terms are all-inclusive. And 
not only must all sacrifice, but the measure 
of sacrifice is the same for all. God does not 
ask of any two the same gift, because to no 
two are his gifts the same ; but he does require 
of every man the same sacrifice. To missionary 
and to millionaire, to prince and to peasant, the 
word is the same; ''Whosoever he be of you 
that forsaketh not all that he hath^ he 
cannot be my disciple'' (Luke xiv. 33). 

This law of self-sacrifice, made to embrace 
all human beings, is the noblest tribute ever 

137 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

paid to human nature. It would seem that 
among all peoples and in all ages there have 
been a few capable of the noblest self-sacrifice, 
willing to accept death for others; and such 
heroes have been honored as almost divine. 
Their luster shines down from a height deemed 
unattainable by ordinary mortals. But Jesus 
believed that the refuse of the race — the pub- 
licans and sinners, the thieves and prostitutes — 
were capable of this high heroism, capable of 
utter self-giving for his sake; and in no gen- 
eration from that day to this has his sublime 
confidence been disappointed. 

Selfish human nature in its most degraded 
representatives is surely capable of entering the 
kingdom of unselfishness. But how? Can 
self overcome self or flee from self? 

"All others are outside myself, 
I lock the door and bar them out, 
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about. 

"I lock my door upon myself, 
And bar them out, but who shall wall 
Self from myself, most loathed of all? 

138 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

"If I could set aside myself, 
And start with lightened heart upon 
The road by all men overgone! 

"God harden me against myself, 
This coward with pathetic voice, 
Who craves for ease, and rest, and joys. 

"Myself arch-traitor to myself. 
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, 
My clog, whatever road I go." " 

There is but one antidote for selfishness; 
and this brings us to the third great social 
law of Jesus, 

THE LAW OF LOVE. 

We have seen that service and sacrifice 
which are not unselfish are not Christian. In 
like manner there may be love which is not 
Christian, because it is not disinterested. 
There is a natural love, the evolution of 
which began with the struggle for the life of 
others, and its flower, as seen in family affec- 
tion and in patriotism, is the most exquisite 
and noble product of nature, but there is an 

" Christina Rossetti. 
139 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

element of selfishness in it, which is quite ob- 
vious. 

Disinterested love is divine; that is the love 
that God is. When that enters the heart, new- 
life, divine life, eternal life enters it. Like all 
life, it is not evolved, but transmitted; and like 
all higher life, it comes from above. Dead 
matter is no longer believed to possess "all 
the power and potency of life.'' When in- 
organic matter becomes organic, it is because 
vegetable life has come down to it and lifted 
it over the chasm between life and death, 
which, of itself, it was powerless to cross. The 
process is inscrutable, but the fact is indis- 
putable. 

In like manner, the man spiritually dead be- 
comes spiritually alive. The process is equally 
inscrutable, but the fact is equally indisputable. 
Not only do the phenomena of spiritual life 
appear where they had been absent, but there 
is the additional evidence afforded by the testi- 
mony of consciousness. The new life has not 

140 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

been evolved ; it began with a new birth, which, 
as Jesus said, must needs come "from above" 
(Jno. iii. 3). 

We may trace matter from the inorganic 
form up through the vegetable and animal king- 
doms to man; and it is to be observed that in 
each instance promotion is conditioned on a cer- 
tain preparation, before life can come down to it 
and assimilate it, thus lifting it up to a higher 
kingdom, and making it subject to higher laws. 
As the grass must die to itself before it can 
live in the ox, and the ox must die to himself 
before he can live in the man, so man must die 
to himself before he can enter into a higher 
life, even the life of God. 

I think it has been made evident in the pre- 
ceding discussion that selfishness is the great 
enemy of the kingdom of God, the chief ob- 
stacle to the realization of an ideal world. We 
have seen that men must come under the laws 
of disinterested service and of unselfish sac- 
rifice, if they are to enter into the kingdom 

I4X 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

of God; and to the natural man this seems 
impossible, and is impossible so long as he 
remains unregenerate. If you ask inorganic 
matter to bud and blossom and bring forth 
fruit, you ask an impossibility, so long as it 
remains inorganic. It cannot obey the laws of 
the vegetable kingdom until it rises into that 
kingdom. But after it has begun to live, obe- 
dience to the laws of life becomes as wholly 
natural as it was before wholly impossible. 

The selfish man cannot render disinterested 
service and make unselfish sacrifice; and he 
very likely scoffs at the idea of any one's doing 
so. He will have to be born from above before 
he can ''see the kingdom of God'' (Jno. iii. 3). 
But after he has died to self and risen into the 
new life of that kingdom, what was before 
impossible and inconceivable to him now be- 
comes as natural and as beautiful as the 
unfolding of a flower. 

Men cannot be moved without motives. The 
heart abhors a vacuum ; the only way to empty 

142 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

it is to fill it. If citizens of the kingdom of 
God do not serve and sacrifice for a selfish 
consideration, then they must do it for some 
other: and this other motive is furnished by 
disinterested love. That is the new and divine 
life, which lifts them into the new and divine 
kingdom, and makes them capable of obeying 
its laws. Thus, Christian love makes possible 
Christian service and Christian sacrifice. In- 
deed, they are only Christian love in action, its 
natural method of expression. 

When a service is rendered for love, with a 
distinct consciousness of that motive, the more 
difficult or disagreeable or costly the service 
or sacrifice, the fuller and more perfect is the 
expression of love, and the greater, therefore, 
is the satisfaction. Love loves a hard task. 
It never chaffers; it gives all and longs for 
more to give. Thus Nathan Hale, when look- 
ing into the face of Death, exclaimed : 'T regret 
that I have but one life to give for my country.'' 
And I venture to think that such men as Paul 

143 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

and Xavier and Judson and Livingstone would 
willingly have given up immortality itself, if 
thereby they could have saved those for whom 
they gladly gave their lives. They lived lives 
of glorious sacrifice because they lived lives of 
glorious love. 

Here we catch a glimpse of the true glory of 
God. We sometimes think of the divine glory 
as appealing to the senses, as if it were an 
effulgence which dazzles the eye, or as if it were 
the glory of knowledge, and of power, and 
of immensity, transcending comprehension and 
staggering imagination. But there is a more 
excellent glory, of which Jesus is the bright- 
ness (Heb. i. 3). When certain Greeks de- 
sired to see him, he said : 'The hour is come, 
that the Son of man should be glorified." The 
expectant disciples probably looked for some 
stupendous manifestation of power. Perhaps 
their Master would now assume regal authority 
and manifest kingly glory. The hour for 
which they had so long waited had at last come. 

144 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

And the eager disciples hear these words : 
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn 
of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abid- 
eth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much 
fruit." He is speaking of being glorified and 
he is speaking of death. ''He that loveth 
his life, shall lose it; and he that hateth 
his life in this world, shall keep it unto life 
eternal.'' Then as he sees close at hand the 
great hour for which he came into the world — 
the hour of his agony — his soul is troubled, 
and he prays : "Father, glorify thy name. 
Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, 
I have both glorified it, and will glorify it 
again." And with the assurance that the su- 
preme hour of trial should glorify God, he 
exultantly exclaims : "Now^ shall the prince of 
this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted 
up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. 
This he said, signifying what death he should 
die" (Jno. xii. 23-33). Glory, death! Glory, 
the cross! 

145 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

The disciples' conception of his glory was 
very different. When the ambitious James 
and John desired to share it, they asked that 
they might sit one on either side of his throne 
when he should occupy it (Mark x. 35-38). 
And Jesus tells them they do not know that 
when they ask to share his glory they are 
asking to share his cup of death and to be 
baptized with his bloody baptism of agony. 

At the Last Supper, Jesus said to Judas, 
''That thou doest, do quickly" : and he went 
immediately out to make the bargain of be- 
trayal. "Therefore, when he was gone out, 
Jesus said. Now is the Son of man glori- 
fied, and God is glorified in him" (Jno. xiii. 
27.32). 

No prophet ever wrought such mighty works* 
as Jesus, but it is not his miracles of power 
which fix the attention of a wondering world 
to-day. He spake as never man spake, but it 
is not his more than human wisdom which 
attracts men to-day. It is the Christ "lifted 

146 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

up," who draws men. It is the cross which is 
the perpetual miracle of wisdom and of power 
— the wisdom of God to pour Hght into the 
black pit of human selfishness, and the power 
of God to lift men out of it. 

The cross was not simply the supreme inci- 
dent of Christ's life. In that wonderful high- 
priestly prayer, only a few hours before his 
crucifixion, he prayed : "And now, O Father, 
glorify thou me, . . . with the glory which I 
had with thee before the world was'' (Jno. 
xvii. 5). He was not asking for the glory of 
the Transfiguration, when his face shone as 
the sun, and his raiment was white as the light 
(Matt. xvii. 2). He was asking for the eter- 
nal glory which he had before the world was. 
And this prayer was granted. He was given 
the glory of the *'Lamb, slain from the founda- 
tion of the world/' That was the glory which 
he had had with the Father. That is the essen- 
tial, the eternal glory of God — the glory of 
self-giving; and self-giving is the uttermost 

147 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

glory of God, because it is the most perfect 
manifestation of himself, because it is the utter- 
most expression of love. 

During the reign of the Commune in Paris, 
the Roman Catholic archbishop was thrown 
into prison and condemned to death. In his 
little cell there was a narrow window in the 
shape of a cross. At the top of it he wrote, in 
pencil, "Height," at the bottom, ''Depth," at 
the end of one arm, ''Length," at the end of 
the other, "Breadth." It is the cross which 
measures the height and depth and length and 
breadth of the love of God, and that is the 
secret of its glory and of its power. 

"Love thy neighbor as thyself" was an old 
commandment, as old as Deuteronomy. Jesus 
said to his disciples : "A new commandment I 
give unto you. That ye love one another, as 
I have loved yovt'' (Jno. xiii. 34). He loved 
them enough to die for them. The Golden 
Rule may well be the law of a normal society. 
But society to-day is abnormal, it is diseased, 

148 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

it is sick with selfishness ; and its one sufficient 
remedy is a sacrificial love. 

Can men; common men, exercise such a love ? 
In his prayer Jesus said : *'And the glory which 
thou gavest me I have given them" (Jno. 
xvii. 22), The glory of self-sacrifice, which 
was given to Christ, he gives to his disciples, 
because he inspires them with his love. So 
that the mean, the ignorant, the bestial and be- 
sotted become capable of sacrificial love, because 
of the identifying power of love that makes 
them one with Christ (Jno. xvii. 22, 23). 

Loving is self-giving; love gives itself to 
its object; hence mutual love is, as it were, the 
exchange of two selves, the identification of 
two lives. In former times, when friendship 
was narrower and more intense than it is now, 
men sometimes exchanged names, and ever 
after each was known by the name of the other, 
as if their very selves had been exchanged. 

There is something like this between Christ 
and us. He called himself the ''Son of man" 

149 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

that we might call ourselves *^sons of God/' 
He became human that we might become 
divine. And when this exchange is perfected, 
it is the perfection of joy and blessedness, be- 
cause it is the perfection of love/* 

In marriage, the wife tal<:es the husband's 
name, not for convenient identification, but 
rather to express identity. Their interests 
have now become the same, and more or less 
completely she lives his life. In like manner, 
unless we bear the name of Christ unworthily, 
we are called ^^Christians," because (more or 
less imperfectly, yet in some real sense) we arc 
living his life, have the same supreme purpose, 
and gladly serve and sacrifice to hasten the 
coming of the kingdom. 

When a man gives himself to God and lets 
God give himself to him, God's life enters into 
him, and he begins to enter into God's life, 

-* Bushnell points out the fact that in the New Testa- 
ment the word which signifies love is radically one with 
the word which signifies joy, 

I5f> 



THE SOCIAL LAWS OF JESUS 

which is a Hfe of service and of sacrificial love; 
and so far as men become one with God, they 
become one with each other. Thus love is 
seen to be the supreme social law, the great 
organizing, integrating power, precisely as its 
opposite, selfishness, is the great disorganizing, 
disintegrating, anti-social power. 

And it is as certain that moral order will 
ultimately triumph over moral chaos in the 
world as it is certain that divine love is mightier 
than human selfishness. 



iSi 



VII 

THE SOCIAL TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
NOT ACCEPTED 

Archbishop Magee^ of the Established 
Church of England, was reported, a few years 
since, to have said that the Sermon on the 
Mount was ideal, but altogether impracticable, 
and that if an effort were made to apply its 
teachings literally, '^society would tumble to 
pieces." 

The teachings of Jesus deal with man in his 
relations to God and in his relations to his 
fellow men. The first class are doubtless ac- 
cepted by all Christians as binding. The 
second are some of them accepted and some 

152 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

of them rejected or ignored. No one can com- 
pare these latter requirements with existing 
customs without seeing that in many instances 
there is no pretense of obedience even on the 
part of professed Christians; and it would 
puzzle most people to give any better reason 
for their neglect than established custom. 
Many have never thought of it ; and accept the 
common interpretation of Christian duty as a 
matter of course. If a religious teacher at- 
tempts an explanation of the discrepancy be- 
tween Christ's requirements and the accepted 
standards of Christian obligation, he tells us, 
like Archbishop Magee, that these neglected 
teachings of Jesus are ''impracticable,'' or that 
they are ''not applicable and, therefore, not 
binding." I understand a considerable school 
of earnest people to hold that the laws of the 
kingdom are not binding in this dispensation 
and will not be until the millennium. 

No doubt the social teachings of Jesus will 
be obeyed when the millennium comes, that is, 

153 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

when society is perfected and man's relations 
to his fellows are all that they should be. But 
by whose authority is the social legislation of 
Christ suspended for hundreds and thousands 
of years ? Surely not by that of the legislator ; 
and I know of no higher authority. That 
would be unique legislation which provided that 
its laws should become binding only after they 
were universally obeyed. Jesus nowhere hints 
that his legislation is to become operative only 
after it is no longer needed. The laws of the 
kingdom were promulgated when the kingdom 
was inaugurated; and these are the laws by 
which that kingdom is to be realized. It can 
come only so fast as they are accepted and 
obeyed. To say that the social laws of Jesus 
are not applicable in a selfish society, and will 
not become binding until society becomes un- 
selfish, is like saying that the laws of health 
are not binding on a sick man, and will not 
be until he becomes well. The laws of health 
are remedial, and the sick man can recover 

154 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

only by obeying them. Selfishness is the great 
social disease, and the social laws of Jesus 
were aimed at its eradication. 

It is obviously true that the Christian life 
cannot be perfected without the acceptance of 
those laws, but Jesus insisted that without their 
acceptance it could not be begun. He himself 
perfectly obeyed the laws of service, sacrifice 
and love, and called for followers; making it 
perfectly clear, at the same time, that no one 
could become his disciple without accepting 
crucifixion, that as he came to serve, so his 
followers must serve, and that as he loved 
them, so they must love one another. These 
laws relate not simply to the- consummation 
of the kingdom, they are placed over the gate 
of entrance. 

What makes the Sermon on the Mount 
''impracticable'' at the present time, or ''inap- 
plicable'' to modern society? Is it the fact that 
obedience to its teachings would cost sacrifice? 
If so, w^ere those teachings any more "prac- 

155 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

ticable'' when they were uttered? Did obe- 
dience cost any less when the penalty of dis- 
cipleship was excommunication from the syna- 
gogue? Being "cut ofif from the congregation" 
then meant what extreme ecclesiastical disci- 
pline does not mean now. It had not only 
religious, but also political, social and com- 
mercial consequences. Its victim could neither 
teach nor be taught, could neither hire nor be 
hired, nor could he perform any commercial 
transaction beyond purchasing the necessaries 
of life. Discipleship must have been extremely 
inconvenient in such a society. Doubtless 
those who think it would overturn society to 
follow Christ now would have been of the same 
mind then, if they had been contemporaries of 
Jesus. In fact, I can think of no organization 
of society which would make it really con- 
venient and agreeable tO' be crucified. 

Supposing it to be true that the social laws 
of Jesus and our social system are a misfit, the 
question arises, are those laws to be changed 

156 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

to fit scx:iety, or is society to be changed to fit 
the laws? If it be true that an actual apph- 
cation of those laws Avould cause ''society to 
tumble to pieces," it is because society has been 
built on the shifting sands of human custom 
and not on the eternal rock of divine principle. 
The permanence of such a society is not proble- 
matical. But the Archbishop supposed a literal 
application of Christ's teachings. Blackstone 
says that the literalist ''sticks in the bark'' ; and 
surely literalism is nowhere more superficial 
than in the interpretation of Jesus. On occa- 
sion he reproved his disciples for understanding 
him literally. As an Oriental speaking to 
Orientals, he freely used metaphor and hyper- 
bole, w^hich should not be forgotten in asking 
what he taught. The Oriental mind is imagi- 
native, the Occidental is practical. An expres- 
sion of the imagination, which would not be 
misunderstood by an Oriental, if interpreted 
literally in the western world, would be very 
liable to lead to extremes. In seeking to deter- 

157 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

mine the binding force of Christ's example and 
requirements, it should be remembered that he 
lived in the midst of different social institutions 
and conditions ; and we should inquire to what 
extent, if any, these differences rendered his 
requirements local and temporary. For in- 
stance, Christ girded himself with a towel and 
washed the feet of his disciples, and said they 
ought to wash one another's feet. But we do 
not consider that command binding on us. In 
the warm climate of Palestine men wore san- 
dals. The wayfarer's feet, therefore, were 
travel-stained and were commonly cleansed 
before entering a house. To perform this act 
for another was regarded as menial in the ex- 
treme. When, therefore, Jesus washed his 
disciples' feet and bade them follow his ex- 
ample, the essential thing which he manifested 
and inculcated was the spirit of humility and 
of service. 

This spirit is obligatory always and every- 
where; its particular form of manifestation 

158 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

will vary with circumstances. It is easy to 
insist on the unessential form and to let go the 
essential spirit; and this is the very worst and 
most offensive form of disobedience. Christ 
inculcates principles, and we do not grasp his 
teachings until we lay hold of the principles 
which underlie them. The particular applica- 
tion which he made of them to the men of his 
generation may have been local and temporary, 
but the principles themselves are universal in 
their application and eternal in their obligation. 
When, therefore, we have grasped his prin- 
ciples, that is, when we understand what he 
really taught, nothing remains for the true 
disciple save implicit acceptance and unques- 
tioning obedience. We are not at liberty to 
accept one and to reject another according to 
our humor. We dare not explain away or tone 
down. We may not consult custom nor con- 
venience nor consequence. Results are none of 
our business. Like soldiers, we are to obey 
instantly, counting no costs. 

159 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

To accept a part of Christ's teachings as 
authoritative and reject another part as ''im- 
practicable'' is not only disloyal but absurd. 
We must either accept him altogether or reject 
him altogether, as an authoritative teacher. 
To do otherwise is to drag him down from his 
position as Lord and Master to a place beside 
Plato. If he was not authoritative, he was 
not divine, and none of his commands is bind- 
ing. If he was divine, he was authoritative, 
and all of his commands are binding. 

The three fundamental laws of the kingdom 
are not rules, which change with changing 
circumstances, but social principles, universally 
applicable and perpetually binding; and we 
have seen that the essential thing is not the 
act itself but the spirit and motive of the act. 
Whether, therefore, our modern, industrial civ- 
ilization is Christian or not depends on its 
inspiring spirit and motive. 

Is our industrial system informed by the 
spirit of Christian service ? Professor Peabody 

i6o 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

in his most valuable book, "J^^us Christ and 
the Social Question/' says that business, as a 
whole, is a vast and complex movement of 
social service. He continues : *^The creation 
of new forms of business proceeds, as a rule, 
not from the desire to rob the community, but 
from the desire to serve it; and in the main, 
the most rewarding forms of business are those 
which are based on the discernment of real 
needs and the supplying of real benefits. "^^ 
This is undoubtedly true ; but the crucial ques- 
tion is, What are the spirit and motive of the 
service which men desire to render? For we 
have seen that there is a radical difference be- 
tween the commercial spirit and the Christian 
spirit. Commercialism renders service, it is 
true, but in order to receive service; and love 
accepts of service, but in order to give service. 
During recent years, there have been in the 
industrial world many new and vast combina- 
tions. What has been the motive in forming 

" Page 318. 
161 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

the trust? In how many instances may we 
suppose it was urged that such a combination 
would make it possible to render to society a 
better service at a lower cost? A man who 
urged such a reason would probably be looked 
on by his associates as a hypocrite. It is quite 
safe to assume that the reason frankly urged 
was that there was "money in it." 

Why are yellow journals filled with scan- 
dals, crimes, exaggerations and lies? Is it 
because the public needs sensation, or because 
a depraved appetite demands it, and money 
can, therefore, be made by supplying it ? Why 
are millions of bushels of food transformed 
into noxious drink? Is it because men need 
rum, and to make it is to serve society, or 
because there is a demand for it which affords 
an opportunity for unscrupulous money-get- 
ting? Is anybody cultivating or manufactur- 
ing tobacco because he really believes he is 
thereby rendering a service to society? How 
about the billions of cigarettes made every 

162 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

year ? How about the rum traffic with Africa 
and the islands of the sea ? Was opium forced 
on China because it was supposed she needed 
it? Why is real estate or any other form of 
property bought and held for a rise? Is it 
because any one supposes that the public needs 
to pay more for it? Why are there attempts 
to corner wheat and pork and cotton? Is the 
object to render service or to make money? 

But let us turn to entirely legitimate indus- 
tries. What is the question oftenest asked by 
the manufacturer and merchant? Will it 
serve? or Will it sell? What is the question 
uppermost in the mind of the average investor ? 
Is it serviceable? or Is it safe? Will it pro- 
mote the general good? or Will it pay good 
dividends ? 

Obviously the business world is organized 
on the competitive principle. Does any one 
imagine that the common object of this struggle 
is the greatest usefulness ? If it is inspired by 
the desire to render unselfish service, why do 

163 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

we hear so much of ''cut-throat" competition? 
Does the persistent endeavor to undersell one's 
competitors spring from a burning desire to 
give the pubhc the benefit of lower prices, or 
to get the benefit of increased business? 

"All that the traffic will stand" is a common 
expression among business men. Does it mean 
the lowest possible charge compatible with good 
service, or does it mean the highest charge 
practicable without reducing patronage so as 
to impair profits? What gives the average 
business man pause when he is considering an 
advance in prices? Is it the fear that the 
higher figure will prove a hardship to the con- 
sumer, or is it rather that it will enable some 
competitor to undersell him and so take away 
his business, or that the higher price will so 
reduce demand as to curtail profits? 

The great words of the old political economy 
and of the present-day business world are not 
need and service, but demand and supply, and 
the common use of these words indicates the 

164 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

common purpose and motive of business. 
There are men in business who are inspired by 
the spirit of Christian service; men who are 
more anxious to provide work for their opera- 
tives than they are to make money; men who 
in times of industrial depression continue work 
at an actual loss rather than throw their em- 
ployees out of employment. But it is undoubt- 
edly true that there are comparatively few 
business men to whom the question of service 
is supreme, and the question of profits, how- 
ever necessary, is secondary. 

That our competitive industrial and com- 
mercial system is selfish and, therefore, unchris- 
tian is so palpably and grossly obvious that I 
hesitate to amplify the argument lest I seem to 
insult the intelligence of the reader; but the 
fact that the daily press and that intelligent 
and even Christian business men have contro- 
verted the above proposition leads me to con- 
tinue. 

In apprehension of the Christian law of 
165 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

service, the business world is far behind the 
professional world. How much did we honor 
the soldier in the Civil War whose patriotism 
was kindled only by a generous bounty ? What 
do we think of the teacher whose highest mo- 
tive is furnished by his salary? What of the 
physician who disregards the cry of distress 
from the hovel, because he knows that the 
service would go unpaid? What of the artist 
who lowers his art that he may raise his in- 
come? What of the minister who is known 
to be mercenary ? All of these professions are 
recognized as coming, at least in some measure, 
under the law of service ; but by common con- 
sent the world of industry absolves itself from 
this law. The soldier, the teacher, the phys- 
ician, the artist, the minister, whose supreme 
motive is pecuniary gain, is deemed unworthy 
of his profession; but we take it for granted 
that the object of a man in going into business 
is to make money. Most business men would 
be much amused at the idea of going into busi- 

i66 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

iiess with any other motive. We often hear 
men say they are ''not in business for their 
health/' or ''for fun/' or "for philanthropy/' 
The familiar dictum, "Business is business/' 
waives all sentiment aside, and reduces every 
question to one of profit and loss. 

There are many generous, many Christian 
men in business, who sincerely desire the wel- 
fare of their employees, and who use their 
profits for the noblest ends ; but it has dawned 
on few that production and distribution are 
necessary functions in the great social organ- 
ization to which they owe the service of their 
lives, and that it is their special mission by the 
best possible performance of these functions to 
extend the kingdom of God in the earth. But 
few have perceived that the proper object, the 
supreme object, of every legitimate business 
is not gain but service. There ought to be 
gain, of course, that the business man may live 
by his business, precisely as the man who 
preaches the Gospel should live by the Gospel ; 

167 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

but the merchant or manufacturer* or mechanic 
whose object is gain rather than service is as 
unworthy of his calling as is the minister whose 
object is gain rather than service. 

If the business man thinks I have misrepre- 
sented him, let us make a concrete application 
of Christian laws to his methods and motives. 
We will suppose that Jesus Christ returns in 
the flesh, and that he is given entire control of 
some great railway, the New York Central or 
the Pennsylvania system, or of the Standard 
Oil Company, or of the American Steel Cor- 
poration, or of the business of the average 
employer of labor. He is ''the same, yester- 
day, to-day, and forever," the same who laid 
down the fundamental Christian laws of ser- 
vice, sacrifice and love, and would certainly 
administer the business in accordance with 
those laws. Would there be any change in 
the service of the public, any fall of prices, 
any rise of wages, any shortening of hours, 
any improvement in the conditions of labor? 

i68 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

Does any one suppose that it would be neces- 
sary to placard the fact in order to have it 
known to the employees and to the public that 
there had been a change in the management? 
Whatever change of policy there might be 
would precisely measure the present divergence 
from the Christian law. 

If the average business man should hand his 
affairs over to the management of Jesus Christ 
for thirty days, what might he reasonably 
expect to find at the expiration of that period ^ 
His regular methods more vigorously applied, 
his lines extended, his business enlarged, his 
wealth increased, or would he be more likely 
to find himself bankrupt? If the latter alter- 
native should prove to be the correct one, it 
would be because the existing system is out 
of joint with Christian methods and the Chris- 
tian spirit. 

I do not mean to imply that employers, as a 
class, are more selfish than their employees, or 
than professional men, or the general public. 

169 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

There are selfish and unselfish men in all classes. 
I contend that our competitive industrial sys- 
tem is animated by a selfish spirit, and, there- 
fore, by an unchristian spirit; and there are 
unselfish employers who find themselves victims 
of that system. The responsibility for it rests 
not with any one class, but with the general 
public, who insist on low prices without much 
regard to the methods by which they are made 
possible. From production to consumption, 
commerce is of course a series of buyings and 
sellings ; and the spirit of selfishness in the con- 
sumer, who is the last buyer, insures the spirit 
of competition throughout the series ; and it is 
the w^age-earners, at the other end of the series, 
who feel most keenly the effects of this com- 
petition. When we place several marbles in a 
straight line and in contact with each other, 
if we hit the one at the end of the row, they 
all remain nearly stationary except the last, 
which rolls away. In like manner, the selfish- 
ness of the consumer at one end of the series 

170 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

deals a blow which is conducted through all 
the series with comparatively little effect 
upon the intermediaries to spend its full 
force on the wage-earning producer at the 
other end. 

I have sometimes been inclined to think we 
need one more society — an Anti-Bargain 
Brotherhood. Or perhaps it ought to be a 
sisterhood — at any rate I would not blackball 
the sisters, if they applied for membership — a 
society whose members would refuse to buy 
certain articles or to trade with certain men, 
because their prices are too low. 

Human nature is very much the same in 
workingmen that it is in their employers. 
There is reason to fear that comparatively few 
are more interested in the kind and amount 
of service they render than in their wages. 
Masters and men alike need to be converted to 
the law of Christian service. 

Industry is still in what Emerson called the 
"quadruped state/' Business is still a struggle 

171 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

for life, in which the weaker is made a victim. 
The time will come when will be recognized 
that other and co-ordinate principle, which 
Professor Drummond so happily emphasized, 
viz. : the struggle for the life of others. The 
old industrial doctrine that with certain legal 
restrictions the self-interest of each is a suffi- 
cient guide to the welfare of all is unchristian 
and, therefore, not permanent. When the 
kingdom of God is fully come in the world, I 
imagine that the Manchester school of political 
economy will have just about as much influence 
on earth as it now has in heaven. 

It would seem to be sufficiently clear that 
our industrial system, although based on the 
exchange of services, is not inspired by the 
spirit of service, and, therefore, does not con- 
form to the social law of service laid down 
by Christ. 

But the question may arise whether pro- 
fessed followers of Christ generally obey that 
law. Whatever might be claimed by Chris- 

172 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

tian men concerning their motives, it is quite 
certain the impression generally prevails that 
church-members and non-church-members are 
actuated by the same motives in business. If 
the real object of the former is to serve others, 
the secret is well kept ; the world does not even 
suspect it. Indeed, there are men all around 
us who do not believe that such a thing as 
disinterestedness exists. 

If in the business world, the professed dis- 
ciples of Christ do not generally observe the 
Christian law of service, it is hardly necessary 
to inquire whether they obey the other Chris- 
tian laws of sacrifice and love, which, if pos- 
sible, make even higher requirements. Proba- 
bly few men would profess to carry these 
motives into their endeavors to acquire prop- 
erty. To what extent, then, do self-sacrifice 
and love control its administration? Do pro- 
fessing Christians generally accept the claims 
of Christian stewardship, which, as we have 
seen, are made binding by the social law^s of 

173 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

Jesus ?^^ Church-members talk of their "prop- 
erty" and of their ''gifts." This is not the 
language of stewardship which simply admin- 
isters a trust. It indicates a sense of owner- 
ship. Some (and they are among the most 
open-handed) speak of "the Lord's tenth/' 
which means that they think of "their own" 
nine-tenths. How many have actually and 
consciously surrendered all their substance to 
God for the service of man, and are adminis- 
tering every dollar and every cent as they 
believe will best serve humanity and hasten 
the coming of the kingdom? There are such 
people, but it goes without .saying that they 
are rare. Such consecration would be the rule 
instead of the exception, if the social laws of 
Jesus were commonly accepted. It is no more 
than he requires of every follower. "Whoso- 
ever he be of you that forsaketh not all that 

^^ For an extended discussion of stewardship and of 
the relations of money to the kingdom of God see the 
author's "Our Country," chap. xv. 

174 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

he hath, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 
xiv. 33). 

Large sums, in the aggregate, are devoted 
to beneficence every year, but compared with 
the sore needs of the world and with the sum«? 
spent in self-indulgence, they are beggarly 
small. President Mark Hopkins said that self- 
denial was a doctrine that had faded from the 
consciousness of the church/'^ Not a few give 
like princes who also live like princes, indicat- 
ing that they have failed to grasp the first prin- 
ciples of Christian stewardship. Many good 
and intelligent men justify their living in lux- 
ury by saying that it gives employment to many 
who would otherwise be thrown out of work, 
showing that they have failed to grasp eco- 
nomic principles as completely as they have 
failed to accept Christian principles. 

Whenever we make a purchase we are direct- 
ing the labor of one or more persons for a cer- 
tain length of time. Does it make no dififer- 

" "Strength and Beauty/' p. 301. 
175 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

ence whether we direct that labor to the service 
of others or consume it on ourselves; whether 
it is employed on luxuries which minister to 
pride and effeminacy or on articles of real ser- 
vice tO' the world ? 

In earlier centuries it was believed, and with 
some show of reason, that the rich conferred a 
benefit on society by luxurious living, because 
it put money in circulation; and this notion 
survives long after the only ground which in 
any measure justified it has passed away. 
Formerly the rich, having no such opportuni- 
ties to make investments as are now common, 
kept their treasure in a strong box, or perhaps 
buried it in the earth. As long as it was locked 
up it was of course unproductive, and practi- 
cally did not exist. Doubtless it was better for 
society to spend it in luxury, thus by its circu- 
lation stimulating industry, than to let it lie 
idle. But if that was ever a necessary alter- 
native, it certainly is not now. Even the typi- 
cal miser of to-day does not hide away his gold, 

176 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

he invests it ; and his income from it is at once 
reinvested. An investment earns because it 
serves ; and every wisely invested dollar serves 
the general public much more than it serves 
its owner. It is no longer necessary to spend 
in order to put money in circulation. When 
the rich man now spends money he withdraws 
it from circulation before he spends it. 

No matter how great wealth may be, luxury 
can find no excuse, either economic or Scrip- 
tural, so long as the world is in want. Every 
expenditure upon self, large or small, should 
be made with a view to the greatest possible 
service to society, and in the spirit of self- 
denial. 

Stewardship, of course, recognizes the divine 
ownership not only in our substance but in 
ourselves, and hence means the use of time and 
powers as well as possessions for the glory 
of God in the service of man. Doubtless most 
professing Christians would say that they had 
not thus consecrated themselves to help make 

177 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

the world ideal ; and not only so, but they would 
say they had never been taught that it was their 
duty so to do. 

A Mormon elder once told me he thought 
I would be saved by my ignorance. If ignor- 
ance is a saving grace, then there is much hope 
for many of us, surely. We must make allow- 
ances for the fact that Christian men and 
women generally have not been instructed in 
the social teachings of Jesus. But ignorance 
of fundamental Christian truths, while it may 
in some measure exculpate them, certainly in- 
culpates the pulpit. Is it not true that under 
the teaching of many pulpits to-day, commer- 
cialism and coveteousness exist in the church, 
self-satisfied and undisturbed? There is a 
great deal of preaching* which does not trouble 
the conscience of men who instead of living to 
serve society are living to make society serve 
them, men who instead of living to give are 
living to get. Are not the preachers few who, 
like their Master, make the kingdom of God 

178 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

the great burden of their teaching? Are not 
the preachers few who faithfully inculcate their 
Master's teaching concerning riches, notwith- 
standing those teachings are more needed 
to-day than ever before? Jesus said: "How 
hardly shall they that have riches enter into 
the kingdom of God" (Mark x. 23). That 
is, how difficult it is for the rich to enter into 
the kingdom of service, of sacrifice and of love, 
which is the kingdom of God. Jesus taught 
that it is only by a great miracle that a rich 
man enters into that kingdom (Matt. xix. 24). 
That is, it is a moral miracle when a man 
accustomed daily to have his own way does not 
grow willful and domineering, and when one, 
who has the means of gratifying his every 
whim, leads a life of daily self-denial. 

As a result of the teaching or lack of teach- 
ing on this subject, church-members generally 
do not believe that the rich are in peculiar 
danger of being excluded from the kingdom/ 
or, if they do, they are eager to take the risk. 

179 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

They do not generally take Jesus seriously, 
when he said : ^'Lay not up for yourselves treas- 
ures upon earth'' (Matt. vi. 19), for that is 
precisely what most of them are doing, or 
trying to do. They do not generally believe 
that "it is more blessed to give than to receive,'' 
or if they do, they very resolutely deny them- 
selves this greater blessedness. 

If I mistake not, there is in the church to-day 
a great deal of ignorance, of superficial religion, 
of self-deception and of worldliness, for which 
the pulpit is largely responsible; and the diffi- 
culty lies chiefly in the failure of the ministry 
to apprehend, or to accept, or, at least, to 
inculcate, the social teachings of Jesus. The 
laws of service, sacrifice and love have been 
preached, but they have been applied to men in 
their God ward, rather than in their manward, 
relations. True religion has been believed to 
consist in right personal relations with God; 
hence the duty of serving him, of sacrificing 
for him, and of loving him. This is true of 

180 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

course, but it is only a part of the truth. It 
has not been generally taught that the only 
way to serve God is to serve men, that the 
only way to sacrifice for God is to sacrifice for 
men, and that the only genuine love to God 
is that which inspires loving service and sac- 
rifice in behalf of men. 

If the only existences in the universe were 
God and a single soul, I know of no way in 
which that soul could offer service or sacrifice 
to God, ''as though he needed anything." If 
God were something less than infinite, we 
might increase his well-being by service and 
sacrifice, but as he is self-sufficient, the only 
way we can serve him is by serving his chil- 
dren, and the only way we can sacrifice for 
him is by sacrificing for them. 

When men forget the social character of 
these three fundamental laws of Jesus, there 
results a perversion of the Christian religion. 
The attempt to serve God without serving man 
produces ritualism ; the attempt to sacrifice for 

i8i 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

God without reference to man leads to ascet- 
icism and self-torture; the attempt to love God 
without loving man results in mysticism, each 
of which is a caricature of Christianity/^ God 
in Christ identifies himself with man, and 
refuses to be separated from him. ^'Inasmuch 
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these 
my brethren, ye have done it unto me," and 
'^Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least 
of these, ye did it not to me" (Matt. xxv. 
31-46). 

The assumption that humanity can be sep- 
arated from God in the exercise of religion 
implies a misconception of the divine character. 
Men have inflicted on themselves an endless 
amount of suffering, which did not render the 
slightest service to humanity, imagining that 
they were offering acceptable sacrifice to God. 
They have supposed that sacrifice for its own 
sake was pleasing to him; as if a father could 

^' For the development of these points, see the author's 
"The Times and Young Men," pp. 167-183. 

182 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

enjoy seeing a son torture himself! This is 
penance, which is heathenish, not Christian. 
Nothing surely is more pleasing to God than 
our self-denial and suffering for the sake of 
others. What delights him, however, is not 
the suffering, but the love which prompts it. 
To suppose that he can enjoy sacrifice for which 
there is no occasion, and which renders no 
service, is to suppose that he delights in suffer- 
ing for its own sake, which is a hideous, 
heathen conception. Suffering can never be an 
end in the universe of a benevolent God, be- 
cause suffering is not good in itself. Sacrifice 
must serve; if it does not, it is simply wasted 
suffering. 

Because of the neglect of the social teach- 
ings of Jesus, it has become easy for men to 
think they have consecrated themselves to God, 
so long as they are not called on to test the 
reality of the sacrifice by devoting themselves 
to the service of humanity; easy for them to 
imagine they have given their substance to 

183 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

God, so long as they are not expected to admin- 
ister it (the whole of it) for the good of their 
fellow men. 1 used to know a man who was 
loud in his professions of religion, but when 
asked to give something toward the support of 
the minister replied: ''Oh, no! I have given 
all that I possess to the Lord, and I have no 
right to give it to any one else." It is easy 
for men to persuade themselves that they love 
God, so long as it is a matter of mere sentiment, 
and they are not expected by themselves or by 
their church to manifest their love to God by 
lives of service and of daily sacrifice in the 
endeavor to make the world better. Thus self- 
deception has become easy and common, and 
has opened the church door to worldliness. 

Any one who says that he trusts Jesus for 
his eternal salvation, and who^ 'lives a moral 
life,'' would be admitted to almost any church, 
without having given the slightest evidence 
that he has complied with the conditions of 
Christian discipleship which Jesus laid down. 

184 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

He may be perfectly square in all his dealings ; 
he may be an affectionate husband and father, 
and a "good provider'' ; he may be open-handed 
to the poor, an obliging neighbor, and a re- 
spected citizen, and yet afiford no evidence that 
his aims and activities do not end in himself. 

He may never have died to the world; in- 
deed, he may be very much alive to it. He 
may be living to get all he can out of it. The 
real object of every day's endeavor may be 
self-gratification. That self-gratification may 
take any one of a thousand forms, and may be 
high or low ; or rather, it may be low or lower, 
for no delight, no endeavor which ends in self 
can be really high. It may be intellectual, or 
aesthetic, or even animal. It may be the satis- 
faction of accumulating, and the problem of 
every day may be how to add more to much. 
It may be the exultation of success, the delight 
of beating the other fellow, or it may be the 
love of power, which inspires his activities. 
It may be the pleasure of a luxurious life; and 

I8S 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

he may build his palace with '^costly delibera- 
tion/' while all around him are scrimped and 
haggard lives, for which the Master became 
poor and died. And this man may ask from 
the church, and receive for the asking, a letter 
stating that he is a member "in good and 
regular standing." 

Let no one imagine that I have the slightest 
sympathy with the hostile critics of the church. 
Any criticism I may offer is that of love and 
of a great longing that she may gain her 
Master's conception of the kingdom of God, 
and that she may accept in full his social 
teachings. 

No one would maintain that the creation of 
an ideal world is the conscious aim of the 
average church to-day, or that the average 
pulpit inculcates the social laws of Jesus. 

In reply to a criticism that Christianity was 
a failure, a writer in the Atlantic Monthly, 
some years ago, retorted that it was not a 
failure, for it had never been tried. Can it 

i86 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS NOT ACCEPTED 

be fairly said that a physician's treatment has 
been tried when one-half of it has been neg- 
lected? Only one-half of Christ's gospel has 
been preached, and Christianity has been only 
one-half accepted, only one-half applied. The 
salvation of the individual and the salvation of 
society are the two great hemispheres of Chris- 
tian truth, both of which are alike necessary 
to produce the new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. 



187 



VIII 

THE SOCIAL TEACHINGS OF JESUS 

APPLIED WILL BRING SOCIAL 

HEALING 

"The number of relief and charity panaceas 
for poverty/' says an English agitator, "are of 
no more value than a poultice to a wooden leg. 
What we want is economic revolution, and not 
pious and heroic resolutions."^^ New economic 
conditions are wanted, no doubt, but it is a 
new social spirit which is supremely needed. 
No mere reorganization of society is remedial. 
A change of form is not a change of essence. 

^'Ben Tillett, in London Times, Jan. i, 1895. Quoted 
by Professor Peabody in "J^sus Christ and the Social 
Question." 

188 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

Precisely here is the error of many reformers. 
They work from the outside in; they try to 
create life by organization. 

"Ah ! your Fouriers failed 
Because not poets enough to understand 
That life develops from within." ^ 

Jesus was not the Great Reformer, but the 
Great Regenerator; or rather, he was the for- 
mer because he was the latter. He, indeed, 
aimed at a new social order, but it was to come 
from a new social life, emanating from him- 
self. '1 am come that they might have life'' 
(Jno. X. lo). ''Because I live, ye shall live 
also'' (Jno. xiv. 19). 

A sense of disappointment characterized the 
latter half of the nineteenth century, especially 
in Europe, that the high hopes which had at- 
tended the advent of free speech, a free press, 
popular education, and manhood suffrage, were 
realized so partially. Such measures are vastly 
important, but they will always be disappoint- 

^ "Aurora Leigh," Book II. 
189 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

ing, so long as men try to substitute newness 
of condition for newness of life. The emanci- 
pation of Russian serfs and of American slaves 
has been disappointing. Each was a great act 
of justice, which will forever shed luster on the 
two great names associated with them, but there 
was a popular expectation of results from a 
new environment which could come only from 
a new life and a new spirit. 

There are two essentials of healthy growth, 
first, actual life, and, second, favorable or pre- 
pared conditions. To neglect either is fatal 
folly. Conditions cannot create life; and life 
cannot grow or exist regardless of conditions. 

It is life that organizes and therefore deter- 
mines form, but, as we have already seen, dead 
matter must be prepared for assimilation and 
transformation. Animal life cannot assimilate 
inorganic matter; it must be prepared by the 
processes of vegetable life. Again, vegetable 
life cannot assimilate inorganic matter of the 
wrong sort or in the wrong form. The roots 

190 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

of the rose-tree cannot transform rock into 
stem and leaf and petal until decomposition 
liberates its elements for new combinations. 

Never before in the history of the world have 
conditions been so well prepared for the rapid 
and healthy growth of a new social life. Con- 
servatism is like the rigidity which makes the 
solid rock impossible of assimilation to the rose 
roots. Only so fast as an old system is disin- 
tegrated can its elements be appropriated and 
vitalized by a new germinal principle. Now 
the new scientific method has been accomplish- 
ing this work of disintegration. The destruc- 
tion of old theories and of fossilized beliefs has 
not only cleared the way, but has supplied a 
vast amount of prepared material, which, 
brought into contact with vital power, will be 
easily appropriated and assimilated, and thus 
grow into a new social organization. 

The ideal society cannot be designed and con- 
structed, because it is a living thing. We can 
get it only so far and so fast as we conform to 

191 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

the laws of life. As Herbert Spencer says: 
"All phenomena displayed by a nation are phe- 
nomena of life, and are dependent on the laws 
of life." In order to secure the right kind of 
life, the first essential is to secure the right ger- 
minal principle. This done, growth may be 
quickened by supplying the conditions de- 
manded by the laws of life. 

In every living seed is a mysterious and 
potent something which determines its form of 
growth. Wrapped up in the acorn there is, 
so to speak, a vision of the oak, toward the 
realization of which is all its progress. This 
is its germinal principle, which differentiates it 
from every other kind of life and makes it 
absolutely certain that it will not grow into a 
pine tree or an elm. If the acorn were self- 
conscious, this 'Vision" of the future oak would 
be its ideal. Now society, as it gains self- 
consciousness, gains a social ideal, which, like 
a germinal principle, shapes its growth and 
determines its character. The man whose 

192 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

ideal is the gratification of his appetites cannot 
possibly grow into a scholar or a saint, unless 
there is implanted in him a new and very dif- 
ferent principle of life; and this is as true of 
society as it is of the individual. 

The new social life, which came with the 
industrial revolution, is gaining self -conscious- 
ness and a social ideal. This ideal is largely 
materialistic. The solution of the problem of 
production has made possible an abundance for 
all. As the starving dream of feasting, it is 
not strange that those who have long suffered 
physical want should dream of a coming social 
system, in which the satisfaction of all physical 
wants will be the supreme good. The social 
ideal of the multitude is little more than a para- 
dise of creature comfort. It needs to be ele- 
vated and spiritualized. It rightly includes 
perfect material conditions and perfect phys- 
ical health, but their chief importance should 
be seen to consist in the fact that they are 
necessary conditions to perfect intellectual and 

193 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

spiritual health. Perfect life can come only 
from perfect obedience to the laws of life. The 
highest possible social ideal, therefore, is that 
of an organization in which there is perfect 
obedience to all the laws of life, physical, intel- 
lectual, spiritual, social. 

But, as we have seen, this is precisely the 
social ideal of Jesiis, which will be realized 
when God's will (of which all the laws of life, 
physical, intellectual, spiritual, and social, are 
the expression) is ^^done in earth as it is in 
heaven." 

With the development of the new social con- 
sciousness is coming the new social conscience. 
The two are closely related, and each implies 
the other. Not until we come to self-conscious 
man, in the rising scale of being, do we find 
a conscience; and not until society becomes 
self-conscious is a social conscience possible, 
and then it becomes necessary. 

It may be said that the individual awoke to 
full self-consciousness at the time of the Ger- 

194 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

man Reformation. Perception of the truth 
that every soul must give an account of itself 
unto God carried with it an inevitable conse- 
quence. If I have duties to God from which 
no man can absolve me, then I have rights of 
which no man must rob me. Imperative duties 
involve inalienable rights. Since the Reforma- 
tion, therefore, the great struggles have been 
to secure and guarantee rights. To this end 
revolutions have been organized, wars have 
been waged, constitutions adopted and laws 
enacted. This has been the great object of 
struggle and the rich reward of achievement. 
The growth of democracy, the abolition of 
slavery, the elevation of woman and of the 
laboring man are the natural outcome of the 
new apprehension of rights, which came when 
the individual gained full self-consciousness. 

The dawn of social self -consciousness means 
no less to the world, and marks a new era in 
the progress of the race. The close and multi- 
plied relations into which steam and electricity 

195 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

have brought us have made us interdependent. 
We are discovering that our interests are com- 
mon, that our Hfe is one. Relations are so 
intimate that unless each fits to his place and 
does his duty there is friction ; hence a growing 
sense of responsibility, and a new perception of 
obligation. For four centuries the watch- word 
of reform has been ''Rights," but, with the new 
social consciousness and the growth of the new 
social conscience, the watch-word of reform has 
become "Duties." Social consciousness is as 
yet blurred, and the social conscience is as yet 
feeble; but as the one gains distinctness the 
other will gain strength. This growing social 
conscience must be instructed. 

The great social questions, which to-day are 
working like yeast, are ethical. They can be 
settled only by an enlightened conscience; and 
the social laws of Jesus are precisely what is 
needed for its enlightenment and guidance.^^ 

^^ For a discussion of the social teachings of Jesus as 
the solution of social problems, see my "The Times and 

196 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

Property is the kernel of the social question. 
The economic problem of the future is not the 
production of property, but its distribution. 
Until the advent of steam, the first great ques- 
tion was how to produce the good things of 
life; how to divide them, though important, 
was secondary. But the application of nature's 
forces to manufacture solved the problem of 
production; and the average workman now 
with the aid of machinery produces about fifty 
times as much as the average workman of a 
few generations ago. We can now produce 
more of any great staple than the world can 
consume. Men still starve and live in rags, 
but only because they have nothing to exchange 
for food and clothing. That is, the question 
of distribution has become the great subject of 
contention. 



Young Men," where a chapter is devoted to showing 
that the three fundamental laws of the kingdom are 
identical with the three great social laws, on obedience to 
which depends the health of society. 

197 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

Here are some of the burning social ques- 
tions of the day. The Hst was taken quite at 
random ; and it will be seen that property — the 
distribution of property — is at the bottom of 
every one of them^^ : ''Has any one a right to 
property? or is it true, as the French philoso- 
pher, Proudhon, said, that 'property is theft'? 
If a man has a right to property, is there any 
limit to the amount he has a right to hold? 
Has he any right to a superfluity while others, 
equally deserving, are in want ? If a man has 
a right to property, has he a right to spend it 
as he pleases? Has any one a right to prop- 
erty in land? or is the land the natural heritage 
of all the people? Has every man a right to 
live? If so, has he a right to the means of 
life? And has he a right to do with his life 
what he pleases? Has he a right to self-devel- 
opment — to make the most of himself? If so, 
how is that right to be secured ? Is it the duty 
of every able-bodied person to work? If so, 

^^"The Times and Young Men," pp. 99, i(X>. 
198 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

how is that obhgation to be enforced? Has 
every one a right to work? If so, whose duty 
is it to furnish employment? Is labor the 
source of all wealth? What are the rights of 
labor? and what are the rights of capital? 
What are the relations of the two? If they 
have rights, have they not also duties ? What 
are the duties of each ? What are the relations 
of organized and unorganized labor ? Has un- 
organized labor no rights? How is the cen- 
tralization of industrial power to be harmonized 
with the distribution of political power ? That 
is, how is organized industry to be reconciled 
with democracy?" 

Not one of these questions can be settled, 
or even discussed, without involving the prob- 
lem of distribution ; and that is more a question 
of morals than of economics, and will never 
be settled until men emphasize duties rather 
than rights. It is, therefore, primarily a ques- 
tion of conscience, which permits us to forego 
rights, but holds us to duties. And be it ob- 

199 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

served, the social laws of Jesus deal with duties, 
not with rights. 

Duties give; rights get. When you empha- 
size rights, you are seeking your own; when 
you emphasize duties, you are seeking the wel- 
fare of another. It is the sense of duty which 
enables you to put yourself in the other fellow's 
place; and that is often the first step toward 
the settlement of differences. When men quar- 
rel it is over their "rights." Legislatures and 
courts deal primarily with rights rather than 
duties. They recognize and enforce duties, 
but only when the obligations of one man are 
involved in the rights of another. Our legis- 
lative system, our judicial system, our economic 
system, our social system, are all based on 
rights, because they are all the outgrowth of 
the old individualistic spirit. 

The new civilization, in which life is becom- 
ing one, and interests common, and well-being 
more and more widely conditioned, must be, 
and will be, animated by the social spirit, which 
emphasizes duties rather than rights. 

200 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

Legislatures and courts, therefore, can fur- 
nish no radical solution of the problem of dis- 
tribution. Laws may restrain greed in some 
measure. They may mitigate evils by making 
it harder to do wrong and easier to do' right; 
but so long as men are grasping, and some are 
stronger than others, there will be strife over 
the problem of distribution. 

The root evil is selfishness, and its removal, 
therefore, is the only radical solution of this 
and other social problems. 

Now Jesus' social legislation — the law of 
service, the law of sacrifice, and the law of love 
— was aimed at the uprooting of human selfish- 
ness. These laws are fundamentally one — the 
law of love; and disinterested love is the per- 
fect opposite, the perfect remedy, and the only 
remedy, of selfishness. 

Permit a few illustrations. It is not really 
the unequal distribution of property, but the 
selfish use of it, which breeds envy and hatred. 
Let a man much richer than his neighbors 

201 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

adopt their scale of living, and use his revenues 
for the public good, and his wealth would ex- 
cite no jealousy. He has the care of his pos- 
sessions, but the public has the good of them, 
because he has really accepted Christian stew- 
ardship. I know a man in humble circum- 
stances, who on seeing pass a woman, widely 
known and loved for her benefactions, re- 
marked: '1 am a poor man, but I don't 
begrudge that woman one cent. I wish she 
had twice as much as she has." 

Suppose capital and labor were both brought 
under the Christian law of service; there could 
be no more conflict between them than between 
brain and hand. If labor unions were formed 
with a view to more efficient service, and cap- 
italistic combinations were made for the benefit 
of employees and of the general public, we 
should hear no more of strikes and lockouts. 

A deep popular discontent is one of the char- 
acteristics of our times. It is constantly ask- 
ing for a larger share of the good things of life. 

20^ 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

I do not think labor receives its proper share, 
but a much larger proportion would not quiet 
discontent. The sad affair at Homestead, a 
few years ago, began, I am told, with the strike 
of 256 men, who were receiving at the time 
average wages of fifteen dollars a day ; but the 
men were not satisfied. I suspect that the 
average millionaire, who is living to get instead 
of to give, is as dissatisfied as the average wage- 
earner, only he does not blame the social sys- 
tem, and, therefore, does not agitate. There 
are legitimate reasons for popular discontent, 
but its fundamental cause is the lack of the 
spirit of service. A Connecticut pastor writes 
me : "I find myself constantly saying, 'All this 
discontent among the laboring classes, and all 
these justifiable causes, exist just as really 
among all who are dependent upon salaries — 
professors, clerks, bookkeepers, agents, and 
pre-eminently among clergymen.' There is not 
one minister in 1000, in this country, who can 
save on his salary, in fifty years, $1000. . . . 

203 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

Now, why should not all ministers, as well aS 
factory and railroad men, be discontented and 
'strike' ? . . . My cook is better paid than the 
educated young ladies who teach in our high 
school. My hired man is better paid for the 
hours he works than I am, and yet I have more 
than the average country minister's salary." 

The cook, though better paid, is doubtless 
less contented than the high school teachers. 
She is probably working simply for her wages, 
and receives nothing more, while the teachers, 
if W'Orthy of their work, are more interested in 
their pupils than in their salaries; and havmg 
more or less of the spirit of service, they know 
its satisfaction. The salary of the minister is 
a small part of his compensation. If worthy 
of his work, he is in the ministry to serve; and 
to him who has the spirit of service, service is 
its own great reward; salary is incidental. 
When the spirit of service becomes general, 
popular discontent will cease. 

Hon. Carroll D. Wright, than whom no one 
204 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

IS better qualified to form an intelligent judg- 
ment, wrote last August: "After many years 
of investigation into the social, moral and in- 
dustrial condition of the people, I came to the 
conclusion that in the adoption of the philos- 
ophy of the religion of Christ as a practical 
creed for the conduct of business, there was to 
be found the surest and speediest solution of the 
difficulties which excite the minds of men, and 
which lead many to think social, industrial and 
political revolution is at hand. I still remain 
of the same opinion." 

This is not simply a matter of theory ; not a 
few instances may be given of the practical 
application of Christian principles to industry. 
The famous experiment of the Parisian house 
painter, Leclaire, was based on the teachings 
of Jesus and inspired by his spirit. On his 
death-bed Leclaire wrote: *T am the humble 
disciple of him who has told us to do to others 
what we would have others do to us, and to 
love our neighbor as ourselves; it is in this 

205 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

sense that I desire to remain a Christian until 
m)'- last breath." 

A well-known manufacturer of Columbus, 
Ohio, writes: 

''We have always endeavored to treat our 
employees as men, with the same feelings, 
hopes and rights as ourselves, and to consider 
that we are all of us one great family with 
mutual interests. I have not begun to do as 
much for our employees as they have done for 
me, but have endeavored to treat always as I 
should like to be treated if our positions were 
reversed. Our relations for nearly thirty years 
have been always friendly and satisfactory, we 
have never had any strikes or troubles of any 
kind, but this is owing as much, if not more, to 
the character of our employees. As illustra- 
tive of this I will tell you of an incident which 
occurred during the panic of '93 : 

"A month or so after the panic began, and 
when large concerns were failing in every direc- 
tion, there filed into my office one morning 

206 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

some fifteen or twenty men, representing the 
several shops in our plant. Their manner and 
looks were serious, and while I had no more 
earnest wish than that I should never have any 
trouble with our employees, I feared that it had 
come at last. Finally one of them, as spokes- 
man, said that they had thought very long over 
the matter that had brought them there before 
they had decided to come, and that they hoped 
they would find me prepared to accede to their 
request; that they had noticed that large con- 
cerns who had stood the stress of many panics 
were failing every day; that our warehouses 
were filling with goods which we couldn't sell, 
and that they presumed w^e, like others, were 
unable to obtain payment for goods already 
sold and that they feared that we might be in 
danger as well as other concerns ; that some of 
them had been with us for a few years, some 
for many years, and some the length of a gen- 
eration; that they had always received fair 
wages and had been able to save some money, 

207 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

and while the individual savings were not large, 
the aggregate was a considerable sum, and that 
they had come to tell me the whole of it was at 
my disposal for the use of the company if it 
were needed. 

'^I will leave you to imagine what my feelings 
were, for I have never, from that date to this, 
been able to find words in which to suitably 
express them." 

The president of a large coal and iron com- 
pany in the South writes as follows: 

"It has occurred to me to state also that I 
have an idea that good wages will not always 
and at all times satisfy men. My judgment is 
that love is the only thing that will control 
them at all times and under all circumstances ; 
and unless a man can love his operatives, and 
have them love him, he cannot control them 
under all the trying ordeals through which both 
sides will have to go during the life of a busi- 
ness. In my judgment, there comes a time in 
the affairs of our operatives in which they will 

206 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

not be satisfied with money alone. In other 
words, I think occasionally a crisis arises in 
their affairs, or they get in such a shape or 
frame of mind that nothing will satisfy them 
but to feel that they are loved by their em- 
ployer. If an operator can really love those 
who are under his control, and not look on 
them as servants, but as friends, and can make 
them feel that his liberality is not exercised as a 
gift to be especially grateful for, but that it is 
his pleasure to divide the earnings with them 
in an equitable manner, and can assure them of 
his love and sympathy — then and in that event, 
he can control them when a serious crisis 
comes. But I do not think any operator can 
ever exercise a successful headship over his 
employees, unless he himself first acknowledges 
the headship of God. 

"I have overcome some very difficult situa- 
tions in the past at our different mines, and 
have controlled and kept at work large bodies 
of men when all the mines around us were 

209 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

closed down by bitter strikes. But, as before 
stated, I cannot say whether I will be able to 
do this always in future or not; but I do say 
that this kind of a course is, in my judgment, 
the proper one to pursue; and will bring the 
best results that can be obtained both in the 
matter of a good conscience and also better 
returns for capital invested.'' 

From another letter by the same man I quote 
the following: '^Men conquered by force are 
only half conquered, and will fight again and 
tear up things when they get another oppor- 
tunity. But men once conquered by love and 
reason will remain true. They are fully satis- 
fied with their surroundings after they are won 
in this manner, but it must be a genuine con- 
version or it will not hold. I believe that if 
love of humanity and fair dealing are back of 
an employer's acts, he will be able to ride suc- 
cessfully every storm that comes." 

Instances might by multiplied of business 
enterprises, conducted on Christian principles, 

210 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

which are free from the ordinary strifes of the 
industrial world, and are eminently successful 
from a business point of view, but the above 
must suffice. 

It has been shown that the social teachings 
of Jesus would spiritualize and perfect the new 
social ideal, would educate the new social con- 
science, and afford a radical remedy for social 
disorders. 



2ir 



IX 

THE SOCIAL TEACHINGS OF JESUS 

APPLIED WILL BRING SPIRITUAL 

QUICKENING 

*To be enthusiastic about the church in its 
present condition," says Professor Bruce, ^*is 
impossible. "^^ 

The church has become a very respectable 
institution which must be "sustained." Chris- 
tianity is vital and is giving life and inspiration 
and power tO' many individual lives both inside 
and outside of the church, but the church is not 
leading the way in the new civilization. It is 
doing much to conserve the heritage of the past, 
but not much to mold the future. It afifords a 

''"The Kingdom of God," p. 272. 
212 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

certain amount of restraint, but not much in- 
spiration. 

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the meager 
growth of the church, and the general aliena- 
tion of working men, which means the multi- 
tude. These facts have been conspicuous for 
years, and go without saying. It is unneces- 
sary to dwell upon the prevailing worldliness, 
and the profound need of a mighty spiritual 
quickening. It is those who love the church 
most devotedly who feel these facts most 
deeply. 

The object of the preceding discussion has 
been to show that the great awakening so sorely 
needed to vitalize the church, to lift civilization 
to a higher plane, and to hasten the coming 
of the kingdom of God in the world, may be 
confidently expected when it is intelligently 
sought, when necessary conditions are com- 
plied with, when the way of the Lord is pre- 
pared. 

We have seen that the supreme need of the 
213 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

world is God — a real God, a present and a 
potent God; and that he becomes real to men 
when they apprehend him in relation to their 
own times (Chap. I). 

A review of the great historical awakenings 
has shown us that men thus apprehend God, 
when neglected Scriptural truth, which is pre- 
cisely adapted to the peculiar needs of the times, 
is faithfully preached. It may be safely as- 
sumed that peculiar need of spiritual quicken- 
ing has come from the neglect of some vital 
truth. That truth of course proves to be pre- 
cisely adapted to the needs of the times, and 
having been neglected, it comes home to men, 
when faithfully preached, with all the power 
of new truth (Chap. II). 

We have seen that the social teachings of 
Jesus have been, until recently, almost wholly 
neglected, or very generally misapprehended. 
The kingdom of God, which was the great 
burden of his preaching, has been commonly 
misunderstood ; and the social character of the 

214 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

fundamental laws of that kingdom has been 
forgotten (Chaps. III-VII). 

We have made a study of these social teach- 
ings of Jesus, and have found that the kingdom 
of God was his social ideal, the will of God, 
done in earth as it is in heaven ; that is, an ideal 
world. 

It has been shown that the true conception 
of the kingdom of God, as a social ideal, fits 
the times as a glove fits the hand. There is a 
prevailing worldliness (a practical denial of the 
reality of God), enhanced by the intense ma- 
terialism of the day ; and we have seen that the 
material, when rightly understood as a part of 
the kingdom of God, ceases to be an obstacle 
between us and spiritual things, and becomes 
a medium through which we may reach and 
influence the spiritual life. The bird's wings 
add weight to her body, but when she learns 
how to use them, they enable her to rise 
(Chap. V, i). 

Again, the scientific habit of mind which has 
215 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

swept away many long cherished beUefs, and 
produced an atmosphere of doubt, has led men 
back to the Christianity of Christ, and at the 
same time cleared the way for his doctrine of 
the kingdom. 

Again, the scientific conception of natural 
law, by eliminating a personal will, has seemed 
to many to banish God from the physical uni- 
verse, thus intensifying the prevailing world- 
liness ; and we have seen that a true conception 
of the kingdom, as the synthesis of the physical 
and the spiritual, makes God immanent in na- 
ture, the laws of which are only the expression 
of his will, and affords a reasonable basis for 
faith in providence and in prayer (Chap V, 2). 

Another reason why God has seemed unreal 
or far from the real world is because men have 
run an imaginary line through life — a sort of 
equator — dividing it into hemispheres with op- 
posite poles. On one side of this line is the 
'^secular,'' which is at least Godless, if not un- 
godly, and like the Northern Hemisphere, that 

216 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

would seem to be the side of this spiritual 
equator where most of the world's population 
live. We have seen that the true doctrine of 
the kingdom of God wipes out this line, which 
is as mischievous as it is imaginary, and gives 
to God his own, bringing him back into busi- 
ness and into all the activities of daily life 

(Chap. V, 4). 

Again, we have seen that the true doctrine 
of the kingdom makes obvious the true mission 
of the church (Chap. V, 4). When the 
church accepts that doctrine, she will move out 
upon the highway of progress to the fulfillment 
of her mission. Failing to recognize the phys- 
ical element in the kingdom, she has failed in 
her duty to the physical needs of humanity. 

Jesus does not say that the first and second 
travelers came and looked on the wounded 
wayfarer and passed on, while the third had 
mercy on him. It is significant that the men 
who passed by on the other side were priest 
and Levite — officials and representatives of the 

217 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

orthodox church. It is significant that the 
man who had mercy on the sufferer was a 
Samaritan, outside the pale of the true church 
and despised by its members ; and yet he mani- 
fested that love which showed that he deemed 
himself neighbor to suffering humanity, wher- 
ever found. 

Is not the same old story being retold to-day ? 
So far as the bodily needs of humanity are 
concerned (and they were bodily needs to which 
the Good Samaritan ministered), the orthodox 
churches generally are passing by on the other 
side. It is the insurance societies, the secret 
fraternities, the town authorities, the organized 
charities — Samaritans every one, outside the 
pale of the church — that are ministering to 
physical want. 

Jesus recognized physical suffering and phys- 
ical needs, and ministered to them; and so 
doing, gave to men a proof of his love w^hich 
the most ignorant and degraded could under- 
stand. Through the lower nature he reached 

218 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

the higher. By going down to the physical 
plane, where the multitude lived, he was en- 
abled to lay hold of men and lead them up to 
the spiritual plane where he lived. The phys- 
ical suffering of the world affords to the church 
her great opportunity to minister to spiritual 
needs, and she hands this opportunity over to 
organizations which make no use of it. 

The institutional churches, the Young Men's 
Christian Associations, and the Salvation 
Army, all recognize the physical man, and it 
is significant that they all attract precisely those 
classes which the churches generally so con- 
spicuously fail to reach. ''The three classes 
of religious organizations referred to above 
differ from each other in many particulars, but 
resemble one another in this, viz., they all alike 
recognize the whole man, body as well as soul, 
and adapt their methods accordingly. Pre- 
cisely at this point they differ radically from 
the churches of the ordinary type. As they 
succeed where these churches fail, is it not 

219 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

reasonable to attribute their common success 
to the methods which they have in common, 
and which differentiate their activities from 
those of the old-Hne churches?''^* 

The Miami Association of Ohio embraces 
the twenty-three Baptist churches of Cincin- 
nati and vicinity. Two of them are ''institu- 
tional'' ; and notwithstanding all the disadvan- 
tages of down-town conditions, which have 
either killed or driven away so many churches 
which adhered to the old methods, out of 325 
additions on confession of faith to the twenty- 
three churches in a single year, 209 were re- 
ceived by these two churches which have 
adopted new methods. But for these two 
churches, the membership of the Association 
would have been smaller by four at the end of 
the year than it was at the beginning.^^ 

^*My "Religious Movements for Social Betterment," 

pp. 33, 34. 

^^ For further particulars concerning these churches, 
and for other illustrations, see my "Religious Move- 
ments for Social Betterment/' 

220 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

Thorold Rogers, commenting on the work 
of the Primitive Methodists and the Lollard 
Bible-men, sa^^s : ''I believe it is true, that all 
successful religious movements have aimed at 
heightening the morality and improving the 
material condition of those whom they have 
striven to influence."^^ 

After the French Revolution "an infidel 
propaganda with a social doctrine had well- 
nigh shaken modern society back into a bar- 
baric chaos." In Germany, the alienation of 
the people from the church, their poverty, their 
bitterness against the more favored classes, and 
their drunkenness and vice '*made society a 
festering mass of corruption.'' The establish- 
ment of the ''Inner Mission" (in 1848), which 
"covered the land with ameliorative agencies 
and institutions — city unions, orphanages, asy- 
lums, hospitals, deaconess institutions, etc., 
touching the life of the people at all points, and 

^^"Work and Wages," p. 516. Quoted in Bascom's 
"Sociology," p. 178. 

221 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

healing the wounds of society," was ''the sal- 
vation of Germany and also of the German 
churches/'^^ 

Let us suppose a church somewhere, whose 
members have such an enthusiasm for human- 
ity that when they lie awake nights they are 
planning, not how to make money, but how to 
make men. Their supreme desire is to help 
the w^orld in general and their own community 
in particular. They are striving daily to re- 
move every moral and physical evil ; trying to 
give every child who comes into the world the 
best possible chance ; longing and working and 
praying and spending themselves and their sub- 
stance to save men from sin and ignorance 
and suffering. Let us suppose the whole 
church is co-operating to this end. What a 
transformation such a church would work in 
any community! How it would "reach the 
masses''! How it would grow! How it 

^^ See Dr. John B. Paton's "Inner Mission/' Pub. by 
James Clarke & Sons, 13 Fleet St., London. 

222 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

would be talked about and written up! Men 
would make pilgrimages to study its workings 
and its success. Yet such a church ought not 
to be in the least degree peculiar. This is 
simply the picture of a church whose member- 
ship is imbued with the social ideal of Jesus, 
and has taken seriously his social laws of ser- 
vice, sacrifice and love; and this picture ought 
to be the likeness of every Christian church in 
every community. If it were, how many hours 
would it be before the kingdom would come 
with blessed fullness? 

There is an enormous power in the teachings 
of Jesus which has never been applied. It is 
like water above the dam, never turned to the 
wheel, like coal in the mine, never raised and 
fired. 

If the pulpit IS to make this unused power 
felt, it must first be experienced. No one 
preaches the truth with power until he has 
himself had a deep personal experience of its 
power. The truths which were so mighty on 

223 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

the lips of Luther and Wesley and Finney and 
McM3dy had first been mighty in their own 
hearts. Suppose we ministers begin with our- 
selves, and make sure that we are ready for 
disinterested service; make it quite sure that 
we ourselves have been to Golgotha, and have 
there been crucified, so that zve are dead, and 
the life in us is the life of Christ; make it quite 
sure that our own hearts are aglow with the 
love that overflows to God and man. Then 
we may expect that these neglected truths of 
Jesus will be preached to the churches with 
mighty power until church membership really 
stands for Christian service, Christian sacrifice 
and Christian love. And then this gospel of 
God will indeed be the power of God unto sal- 
vation to the multitudes to whom he is now 
unreal. 

It will not be difficult then to awake the 
conscience. A worldly man likes to believe 
that professed Christians are essentially the 
same as himself, and differ only in that they 

224 



SOCIAL TEACHINGS APPLIED 

profess to be what they are not. As long* as he 
sees no essential difference, he is self-satisfied. 
If conformity to the world could have won it^ 
it should have been won long since. It is 
when worldly men become convinced that there 
is not only a difference, but a radical difference, 
between themselves and Christians that they 
desire a change or see the need of any. When 
church members generally live a life of service 
and sacrifice so real that it cannot be kept secret, 
so real that it becomes as obvious as a city set 
on a hill, then selfish men will be convicted 
of sin. 

When God becomes real to men, the guilt of 
sin becomes real ; and, as we have seen, God 
is actualized when he is interpreted in the terms 
of present-day truth and in the every-day life 
of living epistles. 

Has not the time come to apply to existing 
conditions the social teachings of Jesus, which 
are so perfectly applicable? 

Has not the time fully come to take Jesus 
225 



THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING 

Christ seriously? Let us either do the things 
that he says, or cease calling him Lord. If we 
wish to actualize God, let us obey him. 

At Reigate, England, in the spacious grounds 
of the ancient Prior}^, there is a tree which is 
known as the ''tree of decision." Under it 
stood Lady Henry Somerset in the darkest 
hour of her life; the very foundations seemed 
to be giving away. She was struggling with 
the awful question. Is there a God ? when there 
came to her the message, ''Live as though I 
were, and yovt shall know that I am/' The de- 
cision was made, and God became real. 

When the w^orld lives as if God were, the 
world will have a real God. His tabernacle 

WILL BE WITH MEN, AND HE WILL DWELL 
WITH THEM, AND THEY SHALL BE HIS PEOPLE, 

AND God himself shall be with them, and 
BE THEIR God. 



226 



INDEX 

Andrews, Bishop, 39, 
Anti-Bargain Brotherhood, 171. 
Ascetism, 182. 
Awakening, New, in new century, 35. 

Religious, how caused, 36, 213. 
Bascom, President, 78, 221. 
Besant, Walter, 49. 
Blackstone, 41, 157. 
Bruce, Professor, 'j'j, 212. 
Bunyan, 60. 
Bushnell, 150. 
Christ, Point of view of, 51, 52. 

Requirements of, impracticable, 152, 153, 155. 
The head of the church, 107. 
Christianity never tried, 186. 

Social aspects of, 63, 64. 
Surreptitious, 99, 100. 
Vital, 212. 
Church a means not an end, 61, 107, 108. 
Ideal, 222, 223. 
Institutional, 219, 220. 
Members and worldly men, 224, 225, 
Not leading the way, 212. 
To make men, not money, 222. 
True mission of, 217. 
Cincinnati, Miami Association, 220. 
Civil War, 166. 

Effect on religion of, 46. 
Civilization, inspiring motive, 160. 
Commercialism, 161. 

In the church, 178. 
Commune in Paris, 148. 
Competition in business, 163-165, 170. 
Conditions, Favorable, 190, 191. 
Cross, Meaning of, 127-129. 

The Glory of Christ, 145-147. 
David's world, 87. 

22^ 



INDEX 

Davidic empire, 68. 

Demand and supply, 164. 

Discontent, Popular, 202. 

Divine sovereignty, 39, 40, 42, 43. 

Dogma, Destruction of, 21, 22. 

Drink traffic, 162, 163. 

Drummond, Professor, 172. 

Duties the watch-word of reform, 196, 200. 

Ecclesiasticism, 62, 63. 

Eighteenth century revival, 40. 

Elmira Reformatory, 97. 

Emerson, 171. 

Equator, Spiritual, 216, 217. 

Excommunication the penalty of discipleship, 156. 

Faith and knowledge, 21, 26, 27. 

Fellowship, Inspiration of, 116, 117. 

Finney, Charles G., 42-44, 47, 49, 224. 

French Revolution, 221. 

German Reformation, 37, 47, 194, 195. 

Germany, The "Inner Mission," 221, 222. 

God, True glory of, 144. 

Will of, 83-89. 
Golden Rule, 148. 
Growth, Healthy, 190, 191. 
Laws of, 30-33. 

Moral and spiritual, periodic, 30, 32, S3» 
Habits, Self-perpetuating, 31, 32. 
Hale, Nathan, 143. 
Half truths, 65, 92, 93, 187. 
Heaven, Christian and Mohammedan, 71. 
"Hell's Kitchen," 95-97, 
Herbert, George, 131. 
Herodotus, 87. 
Heroism possible to all, 138. 
Homestead, 203. 
Hopkins, President Mark, 175. 
Humility inculcated by Jesus, 158. 
Ideal society, 191. 

New social. 115, 192-194. 

World, 71, 83, 84, 186, 215. 

228 



INDEX 

Igijorance an excuse, 178. 
Immanent God, 28, 102, 104. 
Individual, Importance of the, 38. 

Rights of the, 195, 196, 200. 
Salvation, 61, 64, 65, 107, 187. 
Industry, Christian principles in, 205-210. 
Inspiration from true doctrine of the kingdom, iii. 
of a glorious ideal, 115. 
of fellowship, 116, 117. 
Institutional -church, 219, 220. 
Interrelation of soul and body, 93, 94, 97, 98. 
Israel as a theocracy, (i^. 
Jesus in business world to-day, 168, 169. 
Judson, 144. 

Justification by faith, 2>7' 
King the head of the church, 38, 39. 
Kingdom of God, 51, "72. 

As understood by Israelites, 66, d*], 

70-72. 
Burden of Christ's discourse, 51, 52, 

57, 214. 
Common belief in, 59. 
Confounded with heaven, 59, 107. 
Confounded with invisible church, 

Confounded with visible church, 61, 

62, 108, no. 
Definitions, 77-79. 
Extent and content, 75-91. 
Fundamental laws of, 1 19-122, 154, 

160, 168. 
In this world, 72-74. 
Parables relating to, 55, 56. 
Physical aspects of, 76-82, 103. 
Primarily spiritual, "jd. 
Rediscovery of, 58, 118. 
Synthesis of physical and spiritual, 

92, 93, 103, 216. 
Widens horizon, 112-114. 
Wrong conception of, 106, 214. 

229 



INDEX 

Laud, 38. 

Laws of service, sacrifice and love, 179-181. 

Leclaire, 205. 

Literalism in the interpretation of Jesus, 157. 

Livingstone, 144. 

Lollard Bible-men, 221. 

Love, Disinterested, 140, 143, 201. 

Law of, 139-151. 

of God, Doctrine of, 46, 47. 

Sacrificial, 149, 151. 

To control in business, 208-210. 
Luxury, Economic effect of, 175-177. 

Inexcusable to-day, 177. 
Luther, 2>7^ 39, 47, 224. 
Magee, Archbishop, 152, 153, 157. 
Manchester school of political economy, 172. 
Man's free agency, 45. 
Materialistic civilization, 19, 20. 

Ideal, 193. 
Materialism, 24, 25, 215. 
Miami Association of Ohio, 220. 
Moffat, Robert and Mary, 115, 116. 
Moody, 46-48, 224. 
Moral truth, 30-32. 

Motive to sacrifice and service, 142, 143. 
"Mud-puddles," 64, 109. 
Mysticism, 182. 

Natural law, 85, 86, 88, 100, 216. 
Neglect of physical, 94, 95, 217. 

Neglected Scriptural truth, z^^ 40, 42, 44, 48, 94, 214. 
New awakening in new century, 35. 
Nineteenth century, disappointment at end of, 189. 
Revival in first half of, 42. 
Last half of, 45. 
Sensitiveness increased in, 45, 46. 
Olshausen, 78. 

Organic and inorganic matter, 140-142. 
Organization not life, 19. 
Paul, 143. 
Pauper, A, 135. 

230 



INDEX 

Peabody, Professor, 78, 160, 161, 188. 
Personal experiences, 223, 224. 

Relations with God, 23, 24, 180. 
Physical conditions and moral progress, 95-98, 218, 

219, 221. 
Physical in the Kingdom of God, 76-82. 
Plagiarists, 18, 48. 
Prayer, The Lord's, 83, 84. 
Preachers, Few faithful, 178. 
Primitive Methodists, 221. 
Principles and industry. Christian, 205. 

Inculcated by Christ, 159, 160. 
Progress, Intellectual, ss, 34. 

of natural science, 22. 
Property, Distribution of, 197-199, 201. 
Prophets and their messages, 18, 68-71. 

of science, 86. 

their methods, 47, 48. 
Proudhon, 198. 
Puritan revival, 38, 47. 
Reality of God, 214, 216, 217, 226. 
Religion, An expression of spiritual life, 15-17. 

Common conception of, 83. 

Form of expression changes, 16-18. 

Morals and, 109. 

Vital, 15. 
Renaissance, The new Christian, 59. 
Reward of service, 122-125, 204. 
Riches, Jesus' teaching on, 179, 180. 
Rights of the individual, 195, 196, 200. 
Ritualism, 181. 
Rogers, Thorold, 221. 
Rossetti, Christina, 138, 139. 
Royal Rule of God, 90. 
Russian serfs, 190. 
"Sacred" and ''secular," 105. 
Sacrifice, Completeness of, 130-132, 136-138. 

Law of, 127-138. 

No class legislation, 137, 138. 

Unselfish, 141, 142. 

Wasted, 182, 183. 

231 



INDEX 

Salvation Army, 219. 

Samaritan, Parable of the Good, 217, 218. 

Schaff, Philip, no. 

Science and the Bible, 86, 87. 

Scientific habit of mind, 20, 21, 26, 215, 216, 

Sectarianism, 62^ no. 

''Secular," 216. 

So-called, 105, 106. 
Self-abnegation, 127-132. 
Self-denial, 175. 
Self-giving, Glory of, 147, 149. 
Selfishness the root evil, 201. 
Sense of humanity, 49. 

Sensitiveness increased in nineteenth century, 45, 46. 
Sermon on the Mount, 123, 124, 152, 155. 
Service and sacrifice, conscious and unconscious, 133-135. 
Commercial and Christian, 122-125. 
Disinterested, 141, 142. 
Inculcated by Jesus, 158. 
Lack of spirit of, 203. 
Law of, 120-127, 202. 

Fundamental, 121, 122. 
In industry, 166-173. 
In the professions, 166. 
Reward of, 122-125, 204. 
Slaves, Emancipation of, 190. 
Social conscience, 49, 50, 194. 
Ideal of Jesus, 50, 194. 
Legislation of Jesus, 200, 201. 
Questions, 196-199. 
Settlements, 99. 
Spirit, New, 188. 
System a misfit, 156, 169. 

Teachings of Jesus, 1 18-138, 153, 181, 188-226. 
Somerset, Lady Henry, 226. 
Spencer, Herbert, 192. 
Spiritual life, 140, 141. 

Necessary to win world, 82. 
Stead, F. Herbert, 89-91. 

Stewardship, Christian, 132, 173-175, 177, 202. 
Law of, 126. 

232 



INDEX 

Strikes and lockouts, 202. 

Struggle for the life of others, 139, 172. 

Sun, Our knowledge of, 86. 

Supreme need of the world, 13-15, 213, 214. 

Taylor, Isaac, 41. 

Teacher and scholar, (£. 

Tenement house problems, 95-97. 

Thoreau, 112. 

Tillett, Ben, 188. 

Trust, Motive in forming, 161, 162. 

Tyndall, Professor, 102. 

Van Oosterzee, 78. 

Warner, Charles Dudley, 97. 

Wesley, 41, 42, 47, 224. 

Will, Surrender of, 128-130. 

Through law, loi, 102. 
Workingmen alienated from church, 213. 
World, The known, 87, 88. 
Wcrldliness in the church, 184-186. 
Wright, Hon. Carroll D., 204. 
Xavier, 144. 
Yellow journals, 162. 
Young Men's Christian Associations, 219. 



233 



THE TIMES AND 
YOUNG MEN 

JOSIAH STRONG 

i2mo, cloth, net, - - 75 cents 

Wm. E. Dodge. — ** It is admirable in every way, 
packed full of common sense, and written with a 
convincing and kindly logic. It is very cheery and 
hopeful and ought to do great good." 

Prof. Jesse Macy, of Iowa College, — ** It contains 
just the guidance which the youth of the age need. 
You are to be congratulated upon the production of 
so timely a book." 

Pres. John Henry Barrows, of Oberlin College, 
— In an article in Leslie's Weekly^ Pres. Barrows 
cited ** The Times and Young Men " as one of the 
three most notable books of the year. He said : 
'* Dr. Strong's book is the best volume of practical 
religion that can be put in the hands of the young 
men at this time. It deals with the great laws of 
service, self sacrifice and love, which never change, 
and with great directness and marvelous clearness 
of statement applies them to personal and social 
problems." 

Pres. W. H. P. Faunce, of Brown University, — 
•' It is a sane, wholesome and inspiring message 
born of personal experience, and sure to reach the 
minds and hearts of young men. What our young 
men chiefly need to-day is not good advice on this 
or that subject, but the right view of the world 
and the right attitude toward life. In gaining and 
keeping this, your book cannot fail to help them." 

The Baker & Taylor Co., Publishers 

j 33-37 E. 17th Street, Union Square North, New York 

I 



BAKER <& TAYLOn CO/ 8 PUBLICATIONS. 

OUR COUNTRY: Its Present Crisis and its Pos- 
sible Future. By Rev. Josiah Strong, D.D. 
12mo, 275 pp., paper, 30 cents; cloth, 60 cents. 
Revision based on the Census of 1890. A new edi- 
tion (160th thousand). 

The many thousands who read the earlier editions of this 
book, and were moved by its striking portrayal of our relig- 
ious, social, and economic condition and tendencies, will learn 
with interest that the author has availed himself of the latest 
statistics of the Census of 1890 to make a revision of his work, 
which causes it to show the changes of the last ten years, and 
to picture the actual situation of to-day. The matter of the 
book has been increased one-third, and a map and diagram 
forcibly illustrate some of the more startling statistical facts 
and comparisons. 

** This volume is a storehouse of information. We recall no 
recent volume which has so much packed into it of value for 
the minister, the editor, the teacher, and, in general, the patriot, 
as this little volume on ' Our Country.' ** — Christian Union, 

'* Its facts are collated and marshalled with rare skill. It is 
a powerful and patriotic book. It stirs the blood; it warms ; 
it inspires; it thrills and it instructs. It ought to be read by 
every citizen of the Republic; it will be read by all our people 
who wish to keep abreast of needful knowledge regarding our 
country. '* — Christian Inquirer, 

** If the means were at our command, we know of no service 
we could perform more practical and effective for the cause of 
truth and righteousness than to place a copy of * Our Country ' 
in the hands of every man and woman in the land." — Christian 
at Work. 

** Words are feeble in the recommendation of this book. It 
enlightens, stirs, quickens, and makes the blood boil with 
patriotic zeal and Christian vehemence/' — Pulpit Treasury, 

** No publication of the present decade has awakened a more 
profound and intelligent interest. In its present form, and it 
is still compact and easily handled, we again commend it to 
all Christian and patriotic American citizens.*' — New York 
Observer, 

8e7ii postpaid, on receipt of the price, by 

THE BAKER AND TAYLOR COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. 
33-37 E. 17th St., Union Square North, New York. 



BAKER & TAYLOR COJS PUBLICATIONS, 

EELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS FOR SOCIAL BETTER- 
MENT. By Rev. Josiah Strong, D.D. 12mo, cloth, 
60 cents. (2d thousand.) 
This book points out the change taking place in religious 
activities, the causes of this change and its results. The 
Institutional Church, the Young Men's Christian Association, 
the Salvation Army and other organized movements illustrate 
the effectiveness of the new methods as compared with the old. 
" It is an ably- written volume and sets forth clearly the 
work of the churches that have come to recognize what is fast 
coming to be held their true function, i.e., the social uplifting 
and the economic improvement of the people. Dr. Strong's 
book will find a wide class of readers to-day, for it appeals to 
all the various organizations that have in hand, in varying 
degree, the betterment of humanity." — Topeka Capital. 

" The organized activities of religion are now tending to 
the uplifting of the whole man instead of a fraction of him, 
and to the salvation of society as well as that of the individual. 
Those churches and social organizations that have had the 
most vigorous growth are those that are alive to this fact and 
are working from it." — Detroit Free Press. 

" Written with the perspicacity which marks all of Dr. 
Strong's books and contains a great amount of information 
which will be of use to the men and women who are trying 
all over this land and other lands to make the world better." — 
l^ew York Observer, 

" Dr. Strong deals both with principles and facts in a terse, 
compact and luminous way. His account of progress will pro- 
mote further progress in degree as it shall obtain the wide 
circulation it deserves." — The Outlook. 

" It contains a mass of information condensed — such as 
only the most painstaking work would furnish; just the thing 
to refer my students to." — A. H. Merriam, Hartford (Conn.) 
Theological Seminary. 

"The best and latest of all authorities."— Prof, H. B. 
Adams, of Johns Hopkins University. 

" It is packed with valuable information." — Rev. J. H. 
James, Sec. Conn. Temperance Union. 

THE BAKER AND TAYLOR COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 
33-37 E. 17th Street, Union Square North, New York. 



BAKER df TAYLOR CO.*S PUBLICATIONS. 

A New Book by Josiah Strong* 

EXPANSION 

UNDER NEW WORLD=CONDITIONS. 

i2mo, cloth, $i.oo; paper, 50 cents. 

With the same exceptional qualities which insured a dis- 
tribution of more than 170,000 copies of " Our Country," 
Dr. Strong has taken up the great theme of Expansion. His 
book sparkles with striking and original thoughts, put in 
the most captivating way. The reader pursues the argument 
with breathless interest from chapter to chapter, and hurries 
through the most astonishing revelations of our nation's re- 
sources, growth and present-day power and stature to a 
brilliant summary of our relations at the century's dawn to 
other countries, and to the great questions that confront the 
nation under the new world-conditions of to-day. 

" The character, history and operations of the various forces 
combined in the movement toward expansion are described 
in the nine successive chapters of this little volume with all 
that argumentative skill and power, with all that masterful 
arrangement of statistical information, for which Dr. Strong 
has become justly famous." — Christian Work. 

" Dr. Strong makes a clear statement of the changed world- 
conditions which render our former policy of isolation no 
longer practicable. The Anglo-Saxon race cannot refuse to 
take its place in the closer world-relationship which is to 
come." — The Outlook. 

" Mr. Strong would have us dismiss ' the craven fear of 
being great,' recognize the place in the world which God 
has given us, and accept the responsibilities which it de- 
volves upon us in behalf of a Christian civilization. The 
book is one of the strongest statements of the expansion 
doctrine that we have seen. It will convince many because it 
clings to ideals while keeping an eye on the cold facts." — 
Public Opinion. 

Sent, postpaid, on receipt of the price, by 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., PUBLISHERS, 
33-37 E. 17th St., Union Sq. North, New York. 



V\Af< 1 



9l90!i 



MAPlg 1902 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



m 




i2''°'^°^<3BESS 




014 020 273 3 



m\ 



